KM Viray
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS-DOST) has officially issued a statement regarding the rumors that circulated on social media only a few days ago about how the West Valley Fault earthquake would be occurring sometime between July 27 and 29.
Read: Netizens post predictions and warnings on West Valley Fault quake
PHIVOLCS clarified that there is no “land monitoring” division in their organization and they do not issue official predictions of an impending earthquake. “At present, the science of earthquake prediction has not yet matured to the point that imminent earthquakes can be predicted [time, location, and size of earthquakes] using a rational model. There is no technology in the world that can reliably predict the occurrence of earthquakes,” PHIVOLCS said in their Facebook post. In fact, it can be seen on the message that the name of PHIVOLCS was clearly misspelled as PHILVOLCS.
Furthermore, PHIVOLCS condemned the act of spreading rumors without any factual basis, saying the original sender of the message from “PHILVOLCS” “obviously seek[s] to deceive and create panic among the recipients of this hoax message so that it would be forwarded to relatives and friends.”
Netizen Iahs Alcular, who posted a warning to residents of Taguig to evacuate the city on July 29 because the US would allegedly be conducting a solution to the earthquake problem, has been warned by PHIVOLCS.
In a separate post, PHIVOLCS said Alcular may be in violation of a law regarding the spreading of false or misleading information, possibly Section 6(a) of Republic Act 10639 [“The Free Mobile Disaster Alerts Act”.]
“In case the national government may decide to pursue legal action, we are collecting information about yourself, your 440 Facebook friends and posts related to your earthquake message, including the 1,192 Facebook accounts that willfully shared your post,” the post read.
Netizens have commended PHIVOLCS for their quick response to the rumors going about. The last thing the public needs is misleading information which may cause mass panic–a situation which may be as dangerous as an earthquake itself.
