15/06/2024
(Admin) MEMORIES OF MT. PINATUBO
It was Independence Day in 1991. Then Mayor Dick Gordon was speaking during the flag raising ceremony when saw very thick smoke spewing from the direction of Mt. Pinatubo. He immediately rushed to Brgy. San Rafael, San Marcelino, Zambales, where several thousand Aetas(KULUTS) and Lowlanders (UNATS)had been previously evacuated from Mt. Pinatubo a week earlier.
Realizing that the people at the evacuation area were totally terrified and were all in grave danger from debris flow coming from the mountain, Dick Gordon radioed his office in Olongapo to bring trucks, buses and jeepneys to evacuate the people from San Marcelino to Olongapo City.
One of the chieftains by the name of Vic Villa came crying to tell him that there were still people left in the mountain, who continue to refuse to be evacuated. Dick Gordon then proceeded to go up with Philippine Red Cross (PRC) volunteers and his staff to persuade those people to leave.He was advised by the late Director Raymundo Punongbayan of Philvolcs that he could stay only for no more than an hour as the volcano was ready to erupt bigtime any moment. Dick thought then that this refusal to leave was due to their abject poverty which he later postulated as “ an absence of choice”. The Aetas wouldn’t come down without their precious possessions of Jackfruits, Bamboo slats, Rice. They knew that once they reach the lowland, they would have no money to get by while in the lowland. Since there was no more space left for cargo in the trucks which carried the Aetas, Dick decided to pay for those goods. He was able to convince them finally to leave without those possessions.
On June 15th, after the big blast of Mt. Pinatubo, Dick Gordon came back to San Rafael and saw how the place was buried by severe debris flows of huge rocks, logs and mud flow. Had the Red Cross volunteers and Olongapo rescue teams not evacuated the KULUTS and UNATS to Olongapo, they would all have been killed. He was so relieved to know that thousands of KULUTS and UNATS escaped and were saved.
God is indeed Great!
