(PADLOCKED. Chuzon Supermarket branch along MacArthur Highway in San Matias, Sto. Tomas, Pampanga. Photo by Bong Lacson)
PORAC, Pampanga—On Wednesday, Labor Day, two kinds of people milled in front of the Chuzon Supermarket here.
Onlookers stood close to the bamboo fence to see how a 6.1-magnitude earthquake destroyed the building. When the ground shook at 5:11 p.m. last April 22, the structure tilted a little bit forward then its third and second floors crashed down pinning the first fLoor, according to warehouse man and survior Marlo Pallasigue.
“Go away, go under the tent. Don’t get too close,” a policeman yelled.
But nuns, seeing a white wooden cross and dried wreath of fl owers standing at the place of tragedy, approached and murmured prayers.
Investigation
Mayor Condralito De la Cruz on Wednesday said investigators from the Department of Public Works and Highway have come last Tuesday to get documents pertaining to the building design of Chuzon. He said he sent personnel of the municipal engineer’s office for a meeting with the investigators.
In the collected debris, there were rebars made by Steel Asia (size 25 millimeters) and Capasco (sizes 10mm and 25 mm). No grades were imprinted on these rebars as required by Philippine National Standards 49:2002.
At the site are also Chuzon workers – or what were left of the original 92, minus 2 dead and 9 injured – who take turns keeping watch over the structures.
They help two security officers guard against looting for groceries stacked in the warehouse or for twisted steel and distorted roofs that have value.
When tired, they rested on a makeshift bed far right of the store.
With jobs
“We are still working on Labor Day,” Jurela Micca Capara exclaimed to point out that Chuzon workers are not yet jobless.
But asked until when they would be employed by Chuzon owner Samuel Chu, the 28-year-old Casiguran, Aurora native said: “We were told to just wait.”
Although keeping the job may seem uncertain, Crispin Castillo felt sure he was lucky.
With 40 other workers, the 42-year-old stacker ran to the backdoor exit. “That was how I survived,” he said.
He managed to send money to his parents in Paniqui, Tarlac, having received his last pay for the second half of March and seven days of April. Chu paid him P810 for every 12 hours of work daily. Castillo said he has better chances of going back to work in other branches because he was a regular employee, having rendered work for five years.
Capara, a purchaser, said she enjoyed the “gift of life” because she was in the head office in Tarlac during the time of the incident.
The tragedy, she said, would not make her leave Chuzon. According to her, benefits include free living quarters on the third floor. They enjoyed a 20-percent wage increase every year.
The tragedy, she added, was not the doing of Chu.
“Hindi niya ginusto yun,” she said, defending her Filipino- Chinese employer.
Pallasigue, a quake survivor and a long-time employee, said the building was “buo (complete with 4-storeys)” when it was inaugurated on Dec. 14, 2013.
“It’s not like a floor was added and another floor was added again, he said, disputing reports.
In his case, he crouched beside a biga (pillar) on the first floor, pulling fellow workers Realyn Corpus and Jenny Garcia close to him shortly before a ceiling crashed. Mary Ann Sales ran out of luck. Two other checkers ran the opposite direction. Throughout the eight-hour ordeal, they spoke through a thin crack. They agreed they would tell rescue workers their location, whoever was saved first.
Jun Patrick Padillo of Babo Pangulo in Porac, just stopped reporting for work on April 1. “I don’t know why. I just did not feel comfortable. And then the quake happened,” he added. “I was lucky.”
