Newspeg: “… (F)ollowing criticism of the agency’s lack of a presence on Twitter and other social sites, (Phivolcs spokesperson Mylene) Villegas said that Phivolcs is already looking at the possibility of opening social media accounts, but added that this step needs to be studied and handled by the appropriate people.

(PHIVOLCS is the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, the government agency in charge of studying and monitoring volcanic and seismic events and alerting the public on whether they should start evacuating, etc. — they don’t have a presence in the internet except for a website that crashed during last Friday’s earthquake)

      “ Unlike other local government agencies like the MMDA and PAGASA —both of which are also focused on real-time monitoring and information dissemination— Phivolcs does not have an active presence on social media and lacks a dedicated team of social media personnel.

 “ “Yung social media pinag-uusapan na yan (“As for social media, we are still deliberating on it…”), but we need to have a dedicated person to do that,” Villegas explained.” (gmanetwork.com and gmanews.tv)

       “Needs to be studied”; “handled by appropriate people”; “we are still deliberating on it”; “we need a dedicated person”.  

      Seriously.  Really.    

    During calamities, people rely on information for  survival.  In areas where the power is out,  being able to   access the social media thru mobile devices could be a matter of life and death.

      Any staffmember authorized to speak for PHIVOLCS, and who can type 146 characters,  can tweet, or can type tweets based on content given by PHIVOLCS officials. Even the spokesperson herself can be on Twitter in her capacity as PHIVOLCS official spokesperson, if PHIVOLCS itself as an agency does not want to be on Twitter.   It takes ten minutes to set up a Twitter account.

     Here’s your first tweet: “PHIVOLCS is now on Twitter.”

    Here’s your second tweet: “More than 200 aftershocks have been recorded”

      (i got that from gmanews.tv because i’m not a staffmember of Phivolcs ).

     Here’s your third tweet: “Temblor was strong enough, magnitude 7 has energy like 32 Hiroshima atomic bombs – Phivolcs director”

(i got that from the inquirer.net  because I didn’t interview the Phivolcs director).

    Ang suggestion ko po ay (the suggestion is): Don’t wait for the next earthquake.