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...
The Oct. 1, 1995 event later became known as the Cabalantian Tragedy.
Bacolor Mayor Jun Canlas cites official count placing the dead at 550. But Lucia Gutierrez, provincial social welfare officer, insists there were more.
“So many died there. I think the biggest number of lahar fatalities in Bacolor was during the Cabalantain incident,” she said.
The probability is that no one has made a serious effort to count the dead. Relatives of those who died, it would seem, just want the past buried. They remember their dead, for sure, but it pains them to think of how they died.
Phivolcs volcanologist Jaime Sincioco, who was among those who had forecast what happened to Cabalantian, says that from 10 million to 20 million cubic meters of lahar debris avalanched on the barangay that day. He cites estimates that the entire community was buried under 10 to 20 feet of lahar materials.
(From the book Pinatubo: Triumph of the Kapampangan Spirit (2008) edited by Bong Z. Lacson)
