16/07/2025
When the Ground Moved and We All Changed: A Personal Memory of the July 16, 1990 Earthquake in Baguio
I was just a teenager, not yet of legal age. That afternoon, July 16, 1990, I was tending to our small sari-sari store in front of our house. It was just another quiet day… until it wasn’t.
At first, I thought a truck was passing by. The ground rumbled lightly, like a familiar vibration on the road. But then the soft drinks started falling from the shelf. Candy jars clattered to the floor. The shelves rattled violently. That’s when I knew, this was no passing truck.
I jumped out of the store’s display window and ran to the street. But my mother wasn’t following. My older brother and I rushed back in. She stood frozen. “Saanak makakuti,” she said (I can’t move.) Her eyes were wide, full of fear. We had to carry her out.
Outside, neighbors were spilling into the streets, shouting, crying. Then we looked up electric wires were swaying like jump ropes in the wind, and we held our breath, praying the poles wouldn’t snap and electrocute us all.
We made our way to a portion of the road where no house or building could fall on us. There, we waited, stunned and speechless, as aftershocks rumbled under our feet. The mountain air, once crisp and calm, now carried a heavy silence.
When things settled, we went back inside. Glass shards crunched underfoot as we swept the floor. Then, just about an hour later, a friend of ours came over. He asked if we had seen his sister—she hadn’t come home yet. Maybe, he thought, she was at a friend’s house.
There were no jeeps running, so we walked with him, more than a kilometer away to Km. 6, to check their house. She wasn’t there. So we kept walking, this time toward Baguio.
By the time we reached Km. 4, a lone jeep finally passed. It dropped us in Magsaysay. From there, we walked to Melvin Jones, where many people had gathered. The field looked like a makeshift evacuation center. But no sign of his sister.
Now our search had shifted from a personal mission to something larger. We began to realize how much the city had changed in just a few hours.
The Royal Inn had collapsed right where the Jollibee on Magsaysay now stands. Another hotel on Harrison looks like a big hand pushed it to fall on its side. Hilltop Hotel’s upper floor had crumpled like folded cardboard. We heard it would later collapse completely after another aftershock.
A floor of a UB building had caved in. It was only later that I would learn one of the casualties was an old classmate from elementary. And the round building across the gym, our usual hangout as high school students, was gone too.
We pushed on to BGH, thinking: if people were injured, maybe they would be taken there. What we saw was heartbreaking. All patients were outside, lying on stretchers or makeshift beds in the hospital garden. Life-saving machines were silent. Those who needed oxygen had to be pumped manually, by hand, by exhausted staff and volunteers. It looked like a warzone, only quieter, more solemn. We walked around, trying to help, trying to see if we’d recognize someone.
Eventually, we decided to head back. Our families would be worried. By then, jeepneys had started to move again, so the ride back was quicker. And there she was - our friend’s sister, waiting at home. Laughing at us. She didn’t even know we were out looking for her.
We sat there for a while, all of us stunned and grateful. We told stories of what we saw. And for the first time that day, we laughed too. A tired kind of laugh - but a real one.
It’s been decades since that day. But every July 16, I remember it all, the shelves falling, the dancing electric wires, the collapsed buildings, the lifeless machines at BGH, the aching walk through a wounded city.
Iconic structures crumbled, the Hyatt Terraces Hotel collapsed, killing guests and workers inside. Other major buildings like Nevada Hotel, Hilltop Hotel, and the Royal Inn were reduced to rubble. A University of Baguio building gave way, taking the lives of students, including young children. The round building across the UB gym, a common hangout for teens, also fell.
All access roads to the city - Kennon, Marcos, and Naguilian - were blocked by massive landslides, isolating Baguio for months. Communication lines were cut, electricity was down, and people relied on radios, candles, and one another.
I remember how, in a single afternoon, I went from a teenager tasked to sit in a sari-sari store to someone walking through a disaster zone, searching for a friend’s sister, searching for understanding.
I remember how the ground moved. And how we, as a city, rose.
That week changed all of us. We saw things no teenager should see - fear in our parents' eyes, neighbors injured, strangers crying for missing loved ones. But we also saw kindness: food shared among strangers, hugs between people who had never spoken before, teenagers like me walking across broken roads just to check if a friend was okay.
Thirty-five years later, I still remember the sound the earth made. But more than that, I remember walking those cracked streets looking for a friend - and finding, in the middle of all the destruction, something even stronger than concrete: the kind of love, loyalty, and resilience that refuses to collapse.
Where were you during that fateful day?
