Scenes from a disaster

October 1, 1995. 8 A.M. Stampeding elephants were coming again. Their thump was even fiercer than before. A second wave of lahar was avalanching.
“Dios co, Dios co po…” someone exclaimed not so much in prayer as in horror. The sounds heard four hours past became a nightmarish vision: parents and children flailing arms, shouting for help on their roofs being carried away like paper boats by cascading lahar, people stretching out their hands in their last struggle before being pulled under by violent currents to suffer death by quicksand, an entire neighborhood in fast forward mode toward muddy, sudden oblivion. That was the tragedy that was Cabalantian, a day and 14 years ago today, when again we are coping with another disaster of that magnitude.
Earlier on, there was the aftermath of the Mount Pinatubo eruptions, dubbed the worst disaster of the 20th century.
June 15, 1991. 2 PM. Steaming lahar mudflows from the volcano estimated at the speed of 25 kilometers per hour rampaged through the Abacan River destroying in rapid succession the Friendship Bridge that led to Clark Air Base, the Hensonville spillway and the Abacan Bridge where busy MacArthur Highway traversed.
A truck and a car fell with the Abacan Bridge into the swirling pyroclastic materials that also gobbled a number of houses and buildings along the banks, including remnants of the Angeles City General Hospital.
Mudflows also overtopped the banks of the Sapang Balen Creek, a tributary of Abacan, and spread steadily into the city proper.
The very heart of the city – all around the market in San Nicolas and in the business district of Sto. Rosario – was inundated with steaming mud…
…In nearby Porac, swollen with steaming volcanic debris, Mancatian River swallowed its eponymous bridge that connected the town to Angeles City.
The gurgling hot mud packed an incredible force… the massive slabs of the bridge pushed by the current two kilometers downstream.
Mudflows spilled over the banks of Mancatian and swamped a number of barangays, with Mitla and Manibaug-Pasig most severely affected…
…August 21, 1991, monsoon rains triggered major lahar flows that breached the banks of the Sacobia River and engulfed Sitio Burak in Calumpang, Mabalacat.
It took but four hours from midday to completely bury the village under tons of volcanic debris that flowed from all directions. Houses, animals, vehicles and even some people who were caught unaware of the moving deadly fluid mass were buried in its wake…
…In the same month of August a year after, strong lahar flows revisited Mabalacat – coming through the Sacobia River, demolishing the Bamban Bridge that linked Pampanga and Tarlac, breaking through the nearby Hizon Piggery Farm that let loose a thousand pigs straight into the waiting arms of starving lahar victims, and ultimately burying the now appropriately named Barangay Tabun…
…With the spirit of People Power invoked, thousands of Angelenos came down Abacan River with assorted implements as shovels, hoes, picks and rakes – a great number with nothing but their bare hands – to sandbag the riverbanks in a bid to prevent scouring by lahar. Bamboo stakes were used as a crude armoring to the stacks of sandbags.
Just as the determined corps of constructors were about to congratulate themselves for a job well done, a warning sounded. Lahar roared. In one fell swoop, lasting no more than ten minutes, not a trace of their day’s work was left…
…Damned in a wasteland of buried homes and broken dreams, doomed in a landscape of death and desolation…So was the Kapampangan devastated by the Mount Pinatubo eruptions. The above accounts from the book Pinatubo: Triumph of the Kapampangan Spirit.Buried homes and broken dreams in a landscape of death and desolation. So are the areas in Metro Manila scourged by tropical storm Ondoy.
As we Kapampangans triumphed over the tragedy of Pinatubo, so shall they too over Ondoy.
The Filipino is resilient. The Filipino can.