CEBU, (Philippines): At 10pm on Tuesday (Sept 30), the ground under the central Philippine province of Cebu shifted. A 6.9-magnitude earthquake struck, brief but brutal, for about half a minute.
In those thirty seconds, survival came down to timing.
Many of those who lingered outside lived. For others, though, death came suddenly as they slept.
Richard Guion, 39, and his wife were already in bed when the ground shook.
Their house – near the epicentre in Bogo city, three hours north of the provincial capital – collapsed and a concrete wall pinned them in place.
Just moments earlier, he had told his 17-year-old son to go to bed. But the boy did not listen and instead stepped outside to play with his mobile phone.
That momentary act of defiance saved him and his parents. He was the one who dug them out from underneath the wall.
“When the cement collapsed, I called out to him. I’m glad he didn’t listen to me,” Guion told AFP.
Junrey Agbones was also outside, watching over his farm in Medellin town near Bogo, when the earthquake struck. But his 17-year-old daughter was home.
“I kept calling her, but she wasn’t picking up,” he said in a Facebook post by MyTV Cebu.
When he finally reached her, she was already dead, buried in a mountain of debris that used to be their house.
A video posted by The Freeman newspaper on Facebook showed a dog, still with its leash and apparently let out of the house at night, frantically circling a site where a landslide set off by the quake swallowed up a roadside house in Sogod town.
Neighbours said the dog belonged to 72-year-old Judith Comendador, who was inside the house and died in the landslide.
Others were still up, but they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. A firefighter and three coast guard personnel were among those killed in San Remigio town when a sports complex where they were playing basketball fell apart.
The 6.9-magnitude earthquake left a trail of destruction across Cebu – highways split by deep cracks, churches reduced to rubble, a mall set ablaze and many buildings collapsing.
Dramatic footage filmed by residents and widely shared on social media showed an old Catholic church on Bantayan island near Cebu adorned with a string of light bulbs swaying wildly shortly before its belfry crumbled into the courtyard.
“I heard a loud booming noise from the direction of the church. Then I saw rocks falling from the structure. Luckily, no one got hurt,” Martham Pacilan, 25, who was nearby when the belfry collapsed, told AFP.
Footage from a car-mounted camera showed the Mactan-Mandaue bridge swaying wildly, forcing two riders to dismount their motorcycles and hold on to the bridge’s railings, praying the bridge would hold.
A beauty pageant in Cebu city ended abruptly mid-performance as the ballroom shook, chandeliers swung and the contestants leapt and stumbled off the ramp.
Branches in Cebu city and Bago of popular fast-food chains McDonald’s and Jollibee crumbled.
Online shoe merchant Jayford Maranga, 21, said he hid under a restaurant table to avoid being struck by the collapsing metal ceiling of a shopping mall.
“My friend and I ate at the food court near closing time, and then, bang! It was as if the Earth stopped spinning, and then the mall started shaking,” he said.
Aftermath: Rain-soaked body bags
When the dust settled the morning after, people were tallying their losses. Grief was everywhere.
At the Cebu Provincial Hospital in Bogo city, over two dozen body bags were lined up outside on the pavement as the rain poured, muting the wailings of the relatives of those who died.
One man was there for his two children who were buried in an avalanche of boulders, dirt and trees that crushed his house.
He told Sun Star Cebu he was many kilometres away in Cebu city when the earthquake struck.
“I drove as fast as I could,” he said, but it was too late for him to do anything for his children. His wife, though, survived with a crushed leg.
As at late in the afternoon on Oct 1, the death toll stood at 69.
Mary Rose Pepito Lauron and her family were among the lucky ones. They managed to run outside before a cascade of rocks and earth fell on their house.
But in those 30 seconds when the earth heaved and shook, she lost everything: a billiard hall, a utility vehicle, eight motorcycles and their livestock.
“We survived, but we lost everything we had. What are we going to do now?” she said. - The Straits Times/ANN
