ONCE WAKEN, Mount Pinatubo gave vent to centuries of pent-up fury with a series of powerful eruptions, the biggest of which spewed a deadly cloud of ash and gases 25 kilometers into the sky on June 13.
“That is already the big
bang. I can’t see any other eruption that will exceed this. What we are seeing
now are phenomenal eruptions,” Director Raymundo S. Punongbayan of the
Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology reported.
He cautioned though that:
“The story of Mount Pinatubo is not quite over yet.” Mount Pinatubo proved
Punongbayan wrong – on the first assertion, and right – on the caution.
June 14 saw the dark
clouds like the wings of a monstrous bird casting trembling shadows across
Angeles City during the day and a strange gloomy spell that dimmed the lights
of the city’s tourist district in Balibago.
Residents, confused as to
the real danger became expectant of a distant calamity. Frightened by the
frequency of mild quakes and the smell of sulfur in the air, they braced
themselves for the inevitable.
The people with foresight
started to leave; the fearful began long prayers at home and inside churches;
the ignorant, as usual the powerless, waited in trepidation, ready to accept
anything, even danger and destruction in sordid acceptance.
That was how the Mount
Pinatubo eruption of June 15, 1991 came to Pampanga: with deathly fear,
unfathomable anxiety, and widespread confusion that only plagues, war and the
other scourges of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse could have wreaked
anywhere.
Like an epic, graphic
accounts of the Great Eruption varied in their dramatic and incredible
description. Real life narrations and first-hand experiences of those who
remembered the event are reinvented in every retelling.
Newspapers of the day were
unanimous on the congruent conclusion that the volcano had awakened from a 600-
year slumber, with accurate forecast of vast devastation, widespread
socio-economic dislocation, and a heavy toll from the volcanic fury.
At the Zambales side was a
group of media workers who quoted witnesses who said the skies darkened
momentarily after the volcano erupted in the early morning of 15 June.
Newsmen reporting from
Clark said Mount Pinatubo vomited scorching volcanic material in a violent
outburst, then acrid ashes and gases oozed out of the volcano’s active vents.
Like the explosion of the first atom bomb in Hiroshima which was timed
officially by the US military, the Phivolcs placed the Great Eruption at 8:15
in the morning of 15 June 1991. And thereafter, day turned into the blackest of
night.
A tropical storm spotted a
distance away from Central Luzon as early as 10 June moved in for the “kill”
after the major explosion and developed into a full-blown typhoon.
Thus, Typhoon Diding blew
volcanic ash around Central Luzon. It spread and swirled the debris up to Metro
Manila, and as far away as several countries that affected air travel for some
time.
The midday darkness, the
rumblings of the volcano, frightening quakes and aftershocks, lightning and
thunder, howling winds and a torrential rain of pumice stones as big as golf
balls, mud and ash did indeed presage an apocalyptic end of days.
Panic
Panic broke out in all the
districts of Angeles City, its 180,000-populace caught in pandemonium.
Thousands of vehicles
scampered out of the city carrying frightened families to San Fernando and
nearby towns. The most opulent residents opted to seek safety in Metro Manila.
The families that stayed
behind had no alternative places to make their sanctuary. Those who panicked
walked on foot or used every available transport to vacate their abodes in the
city. Workers left their posts from factories, markets, shops, clinics,
offices, and private occupations, to reach home as fast as they could to
prepare for an evacuation. Even policemen on duty rushed home to secure their
households.
Crying infants, mothers
shouting instructions to members of the family, neighbors hollering for their
straying children drowned out church bells that rang incessantly in warning and
as notice to leave areas within the 30-kilometer radius from the spewing
monster…
Phivolcs officials had
earlier warned residents living within the danger zone to
immediately abandon their places…
When the 1,500 US Air
Force security unit who earlier declared they would abandon Clark “only when we
see lava at our doorsteps” raced out of the abandoned base, Angeles residents
knew it was time to do likewise.
Exodus
Thus, started the biggest
exodus of evacuees and refugees that only a war could generate. All main
thoroughfares leading out of Angeles, even those of San Fernando, were jammed
with motorists.
Heavy pedestrian traffic
clogged narrow roads with frightful people carrying and bundles of clothing.
Infants nearly choked in the miasma of sulfuric fumes and steady ash. Every
frightened Pampango thought it was the coming of doomsday.
At the North Luzon
Expressway, traffic grounded to a standstill as thousands of men and women
occupied all lanes in their rush to get out of Pinatubo’s way to wherever.
“Kung saan kami maihahatid ng aming mga paa,” the refugees would say.
“We met wave upon wave of
panic-stricken people. Kung saan sila pupunta, hindi nila alam,” said Quezon
City Mayor Brigido Simeon Jr., a Kapampangan native. He brought some buses to
help in the evacuation right at the Angeles City exit ramp of the expressway.
The Amoranto Stadium and public and private school houses in Quezon City were
designated evacuation centers.
Faces
Public places looked like
an open sanitarium with people’s faces covered by surgical masks against ash
inhalation. Acquaintances barely heard each other, their speech muffled by
heavy gauze masks. But what need was there of distinct language when common
fear and the reality of danger made for easy communications among the
distraught victims?
In the Metro Clark areas,
pumice stone pelted rooftops. A mud rain, then a mighty shower of ash fall
covered the premier community as it did towns all over the province.
All through the day and
night, sulfuric fumes engulfed Pampanga as pebbles kept falling in malevolent
fury. Leaden ash and sand caused building to collapse, first the rooftops
buckling down, then the whole structure keeling over like a boxer pummeled by
knockout punches.
Two were killed and dozens
of commuters were injured when the roof of the Philippine Rabbit Bus terminal
in Angeles City collapsed due to heavy ashfall…
Mute
agony
Thus, the day of terror
began. The nighty ashfall turned day into night while earthquakes shook the
region…Mute agony, unimaginable horror, and certain pain, had been written. And
equally visible on both the faces of the rich and the poor.
As if to add force to
nature’s punitive and merciless wrath, a powerful tropical storm appeared
across Central Luzon. Its winds and rains unleashed millions of tons of
pyroclastic materials from the slopes of the volcano, sending torrents of
smoldering mudflows to Pampanga and Zambales lowlands, burying houses, scouring
riverbanks, collapsing bridges, destroying roads, and causing massive destruction
in infrastructure and private property unmatched even by the scourge of World
War II.
Seven bridges in Pampanga,
including the three main spans in Angeles City – Abacan, Friendship, and Pandan
bridges – were destroyed by rampaging mudflows. Churches, markets, schools,
public buildings, hospitals including the Ospital ning Angeles collapsed.
The Biggest Bang that was
the June 15 eruption would segue to the succeeding blasts with more devastation
to follow.
(From Chapter 3, The
End of Days, of the book Pinatubo: Triumph of the Kapampangan Spirit edited by
Bong Z. Lacson and published in 2008 by the San Fernando Heritage Foundation.)
