MANILA – As a journalist, I had the rare privilege to cover the devastating 8.1 magnitude earthquake-tsunami that struck Mindanao on August 17, 1976. In a blink of an eye, it killed over 8,000 people, injured some 10,000 others and destroyed countless homes and infrastructure.
It was Tuesday morning—seven o’clock—when I called up my office, the Philippine News Agency, for any assignment or I would proceed to my usual coverage in Camp Crame and Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City.
The news editor, Angel Sambo, told me “to proceed immediately to Villamor Air Base (VAB) in Pasay City, where a Philippine Air Force (PAF) plane was waiting for members of the press to go to Mindanao as thousands were killed by a powerful earthquake and tsunami early dawn that day.
I was one of the few Manila-based journalists, who had the privilege to board a Fokker-27 aircraft that took us to Mindanao to survey the extent of the damage.
All available commercial flights that day were cancelled due to the disaster. Brig. Gen. Antonio G. Villanueva, a veteran PAF pilot, was our captain.
With only P20 in my pocket, I proceeded immediately to VAB without question. In fact, I had no way to inform my wife that I was going to Mindanao and would stay there for three weeks, as there was no mobile phone available at that time. We had no landline telephone in our house either.
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At the VAB, we were told that our first stop would be Cotabato City, which was the most devastated in terms of casualties and infrastructure damage. As we flew over Awang Airport in Cotabato, the plane could not land because the airstrip was partly destroyed.
We proceeded to Dipolog City, but as the Fokker aircraft was about to touch down, the airport tower told Gen. Villanueva to abort the landing because of aftershocks.
He immediately pulled the throttle up and as the plane made a steep climb in a perpendicular position, the aircraft was dragged down due to gravity.
Worse, the plane’s twin engines conked out. Fortunately, and thank God, the engines roared back to life avoiding a fatal crash!
Many of the passengers who did not tighten their seat belts were thrown back to the rear of the plane. I had my seat belt on. Fortunately, no one was hurt.
TV cameramen and news photographers were crammed near the aircraft lavatory, but still managed to laugh off the experience while holding their cameras.
We finally landed in Pagadian City. After disembarking from the plane, Gen. Villanueva said: “We are lucky that God saved us from a fatal accident. Because of the awkward perpendicular position of the Fokker plane over Dipolog Airport, the aircraft would have crashed.”
We breathed a sigh of relief, thanking our Lord Jesus Christ for giving us a new lease in life. Before boarding the plane at VAB, I repeatedly prayed Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”
Had we crashed, we would have not covered the devastating earthquake-tsunami, the strongest to hit Mindanao and the whole Philippines so far.
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The powerful 8.1 magnitude Mindanao earthquake-tsunami was the most saddening experience in my life as a news reporter. It was there that I saw more than 2,000 corpses lying on the pavement of the Dipolog public market as all funeral parlors were full.
Hundreds of other bodies were recovered in the periphery outside the market where they were embalmed right then and there. Most of the dead drowned, swept by killer tsunami waves that flooded many areas.
Loud cries of sorrow reverberated in the entire marketplace where relatives went around to find their loved ones. Many of the victims had bloated bodies as their remains were recovered from the seashores.
Rescuers used air pumps to inject the victims with formalin before they were buried in mass graves.
In Cotabato City, thousands were killed. Many of them were pinned down underneath buildings and rescuers had to use cranes and bulldozers to recover the bodies. They, too, were buried in mass graves.
After taking off from Cotabato City for the return flight to Manila, Gen. Villanueva flew over the Moro Gulf, where we again saw hundreds of floating bodies.
We could not dispatch our stories because all communications were down and there were no mobile phones at that time.
It was back in Manila when I wrote my story at the PNA editorial office on the 3rd floor of the National Press Club building in Intramuros.
As a journalist, I will never forget my coverage of the devastating Mindanao earthquake-tsunami catastrophe on August 17, 1976.
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