No! Asaase Yaa [mother earth] could not recently annoy me by shaking itself in some parts of the Greater Accra Region much more than National Disaster Management Organization’s [NADMO] hollow commentary on the incident— a commentary of vain Christmas message to persons living in earthquake-prone zones and Ghanaians at large. “With the recent earth tremors happening, we caution the citizens to prepare for any imminent occurrence of earthquake disaster,” a statement signed by the Director General of NADMO, Eric Nana Agyemang-Prempeh cautioned. The caution, I must say, is somehow welcoming as the earth tremor was frightening enough. It felt as though someone had the earth in their hands, rigorously shaking it left and right— the way a music quartet of the Seventh-day Adventists Church shake their maracas. It was Sunday, December 9, 2018, and it was the tremor that woke me up from my slumber. The said earth tremor occurred with the swiftness of a duiker leaving residents of Kasoa-Nyanyanu and Weija— the most susceptible spots — and other areas in fear. “Massa, what was that?” said a friend of mine, Oye Yaw Addofoh. Oye Yaw Addofoh, publisher of the online news portal, The Probe, had visited me then and would enquire from me what that shake was when I woke up to see him already by his laptop. “That’s certainly an earthquake,” I said. “Really? Earthquake here?” “Yes.” As the wave of shakeup could be felt even in Oyibi, Greater Accra, my area in Ga South had its fair share. This, when NADMO sends a caution that residents should be on the alert, is considerably good. However, it beats my imagination that NADMO sent out such a vague statement. How do citizens “prepare for any imminent occurrence of earthquake disaster”? Are they to stand by their houses, go sit on top of their houses or abandon it all together? Without mincing words, NADMO’s 2018 statement of a Christmas message to Ghanaians was the most bogus of press statements I had read last year. Clearly, the said statement revealed that perhaps the people appointed to ‘manage disasters’ in the country need to be managed themselves. “NADMO and its partners are ready to mitigate the effect of any such occurrence [referring to the earthquake] on the citizenry, especially those living along the fault line,” a portion of the statement read. Is this not nauseating to have come from NADMO? Is NADMO waiting for the disaster to strike before they mitigate its effect or what exactly did they mean? Did NADMO’s Eric Nana Agyemang-Prempeh write this statement himself or it was written for him to sign? If we are to go by the latter, did the Director General read through what he appended his signature to? This is a country where many of our leaders had their education overseas or lived there. Yet, these same leaders refuse to implement what they saw and marveled about abroad. “THIS IS A TEST of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed,” was a message sent by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to people in America in 2018.
The message dubbed Presidential Alert went to some 225 million people at the same time. A friend [Ghanaian] there told me it came with loud notification tone and vibration on phones. The alert was designed to warn the public in the event of a national emergency such as a missile attack. “All smartphones in Japan have an earthquake/tsunami alert system installed, hence, about 5 to 10 seconds before a disaster strikes the warning system should give people a precious few extra seconds to escape to a safer place or duck under the table. When the alert goes off a buzzing noise is heard, and a voice keeps saying, “Jishin desu! Jishin desu” (meaning “There is an earthquake”) until the earthquake stops,” reports jpinfo.com.
TALKING DRUM: Of an ‘imminent earthquake’ & a bogus entity called NADMO!
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Pwaberi Denis is a writer with 3news.com. Follow him on X, @pwaberi-denis and LinkedIn: Pwaberi Denis