False alarm sends 5,000 fleeing from San Roque dam

Around 5,000 people residing along the Agno river in Pangasinan evacuated on Thursday, following a false alarm that water was about to be released from the San Roque dam due to excess water from super typhoon Juan. A huge excess of reservoir water was released by the San Roque dam authorities at the height of typhoon Pepeng last year, causing massive floods in many Pangasinan towns. Also on Thursday along the coastal communities of La Union and Ilocos Sur facing the South China Sea, other text messages falsely warned of an incoming tsunami. A tsunami is a series of massive and potentially destructive waves, caused by an undersea earthquake and not by a typhoon.
As a result of the false alarms, panicked residents in the three provinces fled their homes by the thousands, many of them leaving their things behind, to take refuge in nearby safe buildings and shelters. Residents returned to their homes after learning that the warnings were a hoax. National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRRMC) executive officer and concurrent Office of Civil Defense administrator Benito Ramos was visibly enraged at the spread of false information through text messages. Asked about the perpetrators of the false alarm, Ramos said, “How to describe them? Sira-ulo (insane). Plain and simple, sira-ulo." The NDRRMC has not traced the source of the text message, which quoted a supposed provincial official as warning that the San Roque dam could cause massive flooding when it released the water past its spilling level. Ramos reminded the public to be vigilant about information coming from unofficial sources. By the latest count, 26 are dead, 34 injured, and four still missing due to the onslaught of Juan, the NDRRMC reported. Of the recorded fatalities, 10 are from the Ilocos region. Over 180,000 houses were destroyed or damaged by the typhoon, while the estimate of affected people has risen to around 1.35 million, the disaster-management body said. The cost of damage to the agriculture sector, meanwhile, is now pegged at P7.54 billion, with damages to infrastructure estimated at P67 million, according to the NDRRMC. These figures are expected to rise as the NDRRMC is still awaiting reports from its field offices, said Ramos.—with Larissa Mae Suarez/JV, GMANews.TV