A mini-memoir: July 16, 1990 earthquake, Baguio City

 A mini-memoir: July 16, 1990 earthquake, Baguio City

Baguio City, July 16, 1990 - Not a single thing that fine Monday forewarned of the devastating earthquake at 4:26 PM, except perhaps for that nasty bomb threat in school, which turned out to be a fluke. Just several hours ago, I ran into Tita Francing at the FRB Hotel salon; Tita was my landlady at Engineers Hill, where a lovely wooden dark-green-and-white bungalow sat overlooking a patch of Baguio blooms, the pine trees, and the spires of the Pink Sisters convent. She mockingly raised an eyebrow and said, "Don't tell me you also have your hair done here?" (Originally: "Wag mong sabihing dito ka rin nagpapa-beauty!")) I then did a quick trip to a grocery store near Session Rd., where I spotted in the crowd A.J., the crush ng bayan at the time; she's a commercial model in Manila, the loveliest at the time. I took a jeep to UP College Baguio next and went straight to the Cashier's Office. I was chatting idly with my classmates Mitos, Bing, and Edmund in the middle of a clutch of pine trees on campus grounds, then immediately after Mitos shouted, "Lindol! Lindol!" ("Earthquake! Earthquake!"), we dropped to the ground on all fours against our will, like dogs.

I can still vividly remember the magnitude of shock an intensity 7.7 (Richter scale) quake could make. Whatever anyone was doing at the moment, one was sure to get caught with one's pants down. Every structure trembled, it seemed, with such a fury. Perhaps the Oblation (the UP System's sculptural icon) was an exception, which I saw dancing from left to right, left to right. People elsewhere in the campus lay flat on the ground. The vehicles in the car park moved forward and back like toys in a shop. Girls from BREHA, the multi-story ladies’ dorm nearby, came out in droves, running towards the open ground where I and my companions, whom I was chatting with only a few seconds ago, ran for safety.

At first, no one was in tears. Everybody was too shocked to register that kind of reaction. It was only later when equally strong aftershocks struck that I saw several of the girls crying. It was apparent that, when it shook, A.J. was munching on Pringles potato chips (sour cream flavor). She must have run out of BREHA (UP's dorm for girls) without knowing she carried with her that long, green can of chips. I noticed her eyes to be reddish and dewy.

The tremors were immediately compounded by a mild rain, forcing almost everyone to take refuge under the shaded walk leading to the school corridors. But before anybody could recover, yet another jolt came, forcing everyone to run away from that shade, getting everyone wet all the same, however comparably milder the jolt was. Pretty soon some gathered themselves praying the rosary. Others appeared to mouth a prayer all by themselves. A car entered the UP premises and I recognized my classmate Joy in it. When I took a second look, a girl was being laid down on the bare grass and her body began to jerk wildly. It was Joy's sister, we were told. It was awful watching somebody die and you couldn't do anything. It turned out to be just an epileptic attack, but what a way to have it: in full view of the public.

Never before did I see for myself an affirmation that all men are created equal, that natural disasters are no respecters of men. In the ensuing crowd at the campus, one could see a plethora of humans and their respective emotions - the speechless, the prayerful, the consoler, one cautioning the others to keep off the power lines, another making matters worse by bringing up the false alarm of impending aftershocks. Someone relayed the rumor that the LRT in Manila toppled. (Not true.) I heard Jinji asking around in a distraught manner if anybody saw this friend of hers named Allan Sargan. I saw my calculus teacher Mr. Rimando, tremendous worry painted on his face, which we would learn to be a fatherly apprehension about the kids he had left alone at home. "Lord, take everything away, but please spare my children," he would later explain in class. I saw one guy kneeling on the grass, his two arms held aloft, imploring, unmindful of the rain, unmindful of the eyes piercing through his sopping-wet body. "How bold of him," I thought. He must be one of those recent born-again Christians invading the campus.

What impressed me, though, was frat-man Adrian's reaction: While others were nonplussed at the very least, I swear this guy didn't look like he was the least bit affected, his face a picture of calm and collected.

Many students remained in the campus grounds till night came. A while ago, Edmund had left to see his mom in a nearby government building, which was rumored to have collapsed. (False.) But where's Mitos and Bing now, the ones I was talking to awhile ago? I got a bit worried. They seemed to have disappeared without a trace. 

A.J. seemed to feel better now. She had her tears wiped and had resumed nibbling on Pringles, which she shared with Ruth and her other roommates. I found myself joining my org-mates, Glenn (who was my roommate too), Ria, Jinky, Marju and several others. Like other organizations or groups, we huddled in one spot in front of the Oblê (our nickname for the UP Oblation). 

Later, Glenn and I rushed to our boarding house to find whatever we could find to help us survive in the gathering darkness. We came back with my thick blanket, my slippers, and a gallon of drinking water. We slept on cartons and the blanket which we spread on the damp grass.

Some guys who checked out Session Rd. for provisions earlier came back empty-handed: no food, no medicine, no nothing. They reported having seen people trapped between building floors. Someone said she saw disembodied fingers, decapitated hands and legs. Café Amapola, the favorite 'tambayan' (hangout) of UP Bagiuo students and Baguio artists, was completely crushed. Its neighboring café was also gone.

The evening peace was spoiled by so many aftershocks of every imaginable magnitude ranging from Intensity 1 to 5, so go figure how we kept ourselves sane, especially when rumors about "a bigger one" coming flew wildly and regularly with every tremor. Probably out of exhaustion, we managed to steal some forty winks. While others found it proper to hush up in the face of an angry Mother Nature, others found it best to laugh everything off. It pissed me off that this guy from Manila just chuckled and prattled with his girlfriend and her 'blockmates' the whole night through. He didn't stop until Ria annoyingly confronted him: "Please tone down your voice."

Glenn and I returned to the boarding house the morning after. The scene greeting us reminded us of the aftermath of a police raid: things of every sort stumbled into the wrong place, especially so in the kitchen. How to clean up the mess was a thought that was better perished. I certainly couldn’t stand doing it under the threat of countless aftershocks. Intermittently, Glenn and I, the only boarders present at the time, had to quit working on the disaster area together with Tita Francing's children. Besides, there was the constant threat of somebody else's house collapsing on us. Remember: this was Baguio and flat residential space is more of an exception than the rule.

Before long, we gained the necessary courage to laugh at our reactions during aftershocks, in between shoveling sack-fuls of shattered china and restoring all the plaster saints to their standing positions. I think we came up with at least three sacks of crushed china, all of fine quality, all of them Tita's wedding-day presents. I never went back to the school grounds out of fear that the grounds would swallow me up. It was Glenn who checked on how the rest were doing. Coming back, he reported UP authorities were taking care of everybody, including our fellow UPSCAns. I thought our boarding house grounds was safe enough, and it would mean for our school two less students to care for. Glenn and I whiled away the interminable hours by playing cards with Terê, Francis and Vincent, the landlady's kids. We shared all sorts of stories. At night, sleeping in tents provided by some kind souls in the Engineers Hill neighborhood, or was it Camp John Hay military provisions, made us look like refugees from war. It was frightening yet exciting. We couldn't believe we were eating military meals sealed in aluminum packs! (We were told it was thanks to Dick Gordon of Philippine Red Cross.) 

An uzisero's (kibitzer) walk down the middle of Session Rd. showed unbelievable wreckage. The first floors of many buildings gave way. On street level, we were gazing at their third floors. The very Europeans-style Amapola Café was gone, smashed beyond recognition. Seven-story Skyworld, one of the tallest in Session Rd., was transformed into the leaning tower of Pisa. Remarkably, it was the new structures that got devastated the worst. The old ones proved sturdier. Among the survivors were Saint Louis University's (SLU) buildings (said to have underground ball bearings), the American-era City Hall, and the postcard-pretty Puso ng Baguio Building with its lovely baroque façade intact. The neo-gothic Baguio Cathedral also seemed unharmed at first glance, though we would later learn from Belgian priest Fr. Gaston that the landmark structure must be torn down. (Miraculously it still stands today, dignified as ever like a grand dame.)

Queues of city residents, rich and poor, withstood long minutes before grocery and drug stores just to procure the basic goods. Cases of overpricing were rumored to be rampant. I stopped a balut guy along Session Rd. to buy ourselves some snacks. He looked unaffected by it all, or was it because he needed to earn a living all the more that there was this natural catastrophe? Luckily, I had those groceries earlier in the day, plus my scholarship stipend.

Succeeding nights in our neighborhood were marked by prayers -- the fifteen mysteries of the rosary, led, of course, by Tita Francing who was active in a prayer group of sorts in the area. Help from the government finally arrived, bringing much-needed relief goods, which we found, however, to be so insufficient they wouldn’t feed the family for a day. This meant we had to help ourselves to get by. We stored in pails the rainwater that poured providently every afternoon. Baguio City is a place perennially plagued by water shortage so it didn't help that all the tanks in the neighborhood burst from all that intense shaking-up. We scrounged inside the house for whatever food the other boarders had left behind. (Fortuitously for SLU students, there had been a university-wide strike in connection with a salary hike or some other matter. Talk about blessing in disguise.) Tita Francing cooked everything we could find, delivering dishes like a chef even under duress. There was no electricity, and the phones were not working, but thanks to batteries, we were able to monitor the radio and listen to the unending list of the dead and of those who confirmed about their safety -- or their state of being still alive. (399 people were reported by PDI to have died, 1,102 injured, and 170 declared missing.) We even found time to roam around Baguio some more, to Tita Francing's utter consternation. But for all that, Tita kept on saying that going through a war was far, far worse. Later, we saw what remained of the Hyatt Terraces -- a deck of cards in disarray. I never saw the Hyatt in its glory days, i.e., while it was still standing, and now I was staring at it in its death throes.

"What could we do to overcome, but to make the most of what’s left?" Tere remarked, as we refugees conspired to attack our neighbor's guava tree. Vitamin C, we thought, is an essential nutrient if anyone is to recover from trauma.

At last, personal salvation came Friday. 'Uncle' Cornel, a neighbor back home in Pangasinan who worked as a cashier with Victory Liner here, fetched me at my place. Learning from him that Naguilian Rd. was already passable, I didn’t think twice joining him home. I was so overwhelmed by the thought of home, and the thought of being such a parasite to our landlady (it turned out we've been with her for a week or so), that I forgot about my roommate Glenn. He was from Sorsogon, and his own family must be very worried too. It didn't occur to me to invite him to join me home.

Passing through Naguilian Rd. was like riding a horror train. Falling rocks and the downflow of mud posed a threat like the Grim Reaper himself lurking in the dark. We passengers saw a previously impassable portion being cleared up with dynamite blasts. As if these were not enough, cracks along the asphalt road gave the impression that the road would sink anytime should another major temblor struck. It was death staring us in the face.

One thing I was so grateful of is that I didn’t get to see any of the dead and the injured -- I tend to dream about the corpses I see during wakes. The only thing Glenn, Tita Francing's family, and I had to contend with was a female neighbor who anguished about her pet puppy who couldn't get out of the house. I think the darned dog's name was Nini, and the kids kept on crying, "Si Nini, si Nini, kawawa naman si Nini!" ("Poor Ninny!") Her family couldn't get inside, fearing that an otherwise lovely glass window that hung by the skin of its teeth might smash anyone foolish enough to try. This woman also laughed and laughed at Tita Francing's heavy Samarnon accent.

There was another female neighbor who kept on saying "Lord, Lord," while mocking our shameless display of Marian devotion. "Mama Mary, Mama Mary!" her family would say, as they made faces to match the snide remarks. Unlike the first woman who was helpless about her dog, the second woman's family managed to extricate a voluptuous black leather sofa for her to sit on. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the sight of a prima donna in the middle of a refugee camp.

At home in Pangasinan, I was glad to see everybody. My mother was on the verge of weeping. My father was kind of mad for I hadn't thought of giving them a call. He talked about the radio stations they had been monitoring day and night, but I didn't pay attention to what he was saying. My siblings were beady-eyed. They couldn't believe that their elder brother was alive and well.

Our neighbors were equally incredulous. I braced myself for the torture of telling the story again and again. I became a local celebrity. While everybody had his or her own story to tell at home, no story could beat mine in Baguio.

The TV had nothing but news footages of the killer quake. This was the only time I got the shock of seeing someone trapped between two floors that crashed on top of each other, his (her?) head protruding tragically like an animal sandwiched alive. The TV sitcom "Palibhasa Lalake" had Gloria Romero appearing comically sandwiched between two humongous pillows strapped to her waist. I didn't find that very funny at all.

In the aftermath of the deadly temblor, we students were told that all school activities were cancelled for two months. Little did we know that life would never be the same again for a lot of us.

By October, I returned to the City of Pines with much trepidation. Kennon Rd. was no longer navigable and, it was reported, would be permanently closed to mass transport, so the buses can take either Naguilian or Marcos Hwy. only. (Turned out to be false after several years.) I would learn about the fate of the buildings I've been to earlier that unforgettable day. The roof at the entrance to the UP Baguio library reportedly crashed to the ground; the otherwise brand-new building sustained extensive damage and we would have the auditorium and a huge tent as temporary book shelter. Going to the library to study and do research would cease to be a chore; it felt like entering a ramshackle pub for a drink. 

"Tangguyob," UP Baguio's noble project to bring UP education to the Luzon hinterlands, was held off indefinitely. I was part of that ambitious project to scour the hinterlands for potential scholars. When I saw for myself the FRB Hotel, which transmogrified into a total wreck, I swear I could have made an instinctive sign of the cross. Fat wooden posts had been placed between the shattered floors, apparently to facilitate rescue operations. A lot of occupants must have been trapped inside. What happened, I wonder, to all the screaming gays who gave me salon-grade haircuts? They couldn't have escaped the FRB Hotel unscathed? My Pilipino teacher also ran a high-brow café there called Honeysuckle. Thankfully, not a single soul I knew died. I would also learn that most of my classmates in school, who came from all over the Philippines, got home having the first - and free - airplane ride of their lives.

Originally written: Can't remember.

Revised 7.19.2000