Tell me why, I don’t like Mondays. It made me run like hell out of the SM Savemore in Telabastagan as a 6.1 magnitude shaker sent the relatively peaceful buyers darting out of the swaying building. Those pre-fabricated steel held on to the violent motions for several seconds. The contractor did a good job on that building.
In faraway Porac town, workers of the Chuzon Supermarket were not so lucky. They were pinned down by concrete slabs reminiscent of the 1990 earthquake that rocked Baguio City claiming the lives of several people. I survived the 7.2 magnitude earthquake in Baguio City that happened in July 1990. Several of my friends have died at the Hyatt Hotel in Baguio City and I was among those who retrieved dead bodies from the twisted rubbles of the Hyatt Hotel.
As if Soddom and Gomorrha descended upon us we were pelted with hails storm ice pellets. The weather was extremely cold as if the agent of death have arrived in the Summer Capital. The stench of death permeates the air. We were trapped and getting hungry.
Monday’s 6.1 magnitude shaker was a little bit tame compared to the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that allowed me to see jutting pine trees and collapsing high-rise buildings and people falling from these buildings. From Kennon Road, the Hyatt Hotel was gone – the whole 11 floors went down.
At the Savemore Telabastagan on Monday, fate once again tested my mortality via the 6.1 shaker that gave me a mild headache considering the summer heat. At presstime, the provincial government had already declared a state of calamity in Pampanga province.
Pampanga province had survived the Mount Pinatubo eruptions in 1991 and the succeeding lahar flows that buried towns and people alive. The Kapampangan people will rise up from the debris of Monday’s earthquake just like they did before.