Remembering the Baguio City Earthquake

Last Updated on April 13, 2017 by Marie Bautista

• the sheer terror, the pain, the sight of dead bodies of University of Baguio students wrapped in blankets lined up on my elementary school playground as I saw parents bending to take a look, hear their  silent wish (“Lord, let it not be my child…”), and cringe at the anguished wails.

• how we tried to pray, as we lined up along the streets where it was safer, and cannot finish it, because the earth would violently shake again.
• how I waited for my mom and dad to arrive from work safely
• how we stayed in a big tent for weeks as the earth shook from time to time with strong aftershocks
• how my brother who was in Japan must have worried since he cannot call us for weeks
• how we cheered as we listened to an old transistor radio and hear survivors being pulled out
• how we roamed the city on foot and saw collapsed buildings with intrepid soldiers, policeman, miners and civilians working to get trapped people out
• how my pregnant neighbor prayed every time the earth would shake (she finally gave birth a week later while the earth shook with aftershocks again.  We asked her to name her child Myleen as in “may lindol” (there’s an earthquake”))