"Suddenly we felt a shaking and our room rocked gently, the balance became stronger with the second until the heartbeat went crazy."
We were speechless when the room spun in front of our shocked eyes. The lights went out suddenly, followed by the shaking of cracked walls and glass that fell on the building. . . . Screams of fear echoed out of the darkness.
This is the story of a survivor of a two-minute earthquake that struck the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines on Tuesday, August 17, 1976 at 12:13.
Recorded at 7.8 on the Richter scale, it was the strongest, most destructive and nightmare earthquake in the Philippines in history. It was of tectonic origin, that is, caused by movement or deformation of the earth's crust. US earthquake monitoring stations located the epicenter of the Gulf of Moro, an arm of the Celebes Sea, about 1,049 kilometers southeast of Manila.
The city of Cotabato (with 80,000 inhabitants) and the coastal cities of Zamboanga were the most affected. A large proportion of commercial buildings in the city of Cotabato have completely or partially collapsed. Whole families were buried in destroyed buildings. The cultivated land was immersed in seawater. Fishermen lost their supply area when the flood washed away their fishing boats.
According to a newspaper called Bulletin Today, 3,373 people died, 9,149 were injured, 2,938 were missing and more than 119,000 were left homeless due to the earthquake and subsequent seismic waves. The initial damage was estimated at between $ 100 and $ 135 million.
Exposure to seismic waves
The earthquake was followed by seismic waves, often referred to as "tides". Some of them reached heights of 9 meters and traveled at high speed! up to 719 kilometers per hour. The tolls were very high. A surviving fisherman reports:
“My house was near the sea. I usually fish at night. It was after midnight on August 16 when I was working on my hammock when our house started to gag and crack violently. Land movement was therefore temporarily released.
“Suddenly I heard a new sound like thunder coming towards us. Our family, who were awake now, ran frantically to a nearby hill. The foamy water washed us away. We swam like never before. that we swallowed a lot of seawater in the process, we made it safe. "
From the hill on which they had taken refuge, this family saw their house being dragged into the sea like a floating matchbox. Not everyone was so happy. Surprisingly, many of those who were in the current water wall were dragged away.
Near the island of Sacol, near the city of Zamboanga, a fisherman in a boat more than 100 meters from the sea saw about fifty houses collapse under a strong blow of huge waves. When the water fell, it was on a coconut tree. A woman from another area said she saw her father crawl into the sea, then come back to the next wave that was still alive. Another person told of the neighbor's children who went overboard and grabbed a wooden stake. The child was also taken alive to the beach.
In some cases, the desire to save material goods has resulted in death. A person left a child with a maid when he returned to pick up a suitcase. The child, however. Another man was killed when he closed the doors and waited for the looters. The withdrawal never happened.
A survivor from Olutanga Island in the Gulf of Moro recalls: “When the earthquake stopped, I went to the wharf and saw four houses collapsing. Then I noticed someone pointing to the sea and shouting, “Tides! “I hurtled down a slope as fast as possible. The remaining houses during the earthquake are destroyed by colossal waves. When the skin hit the bank, the chickens flew, the dogs howled, the pigs screamed, the people screamed and howled. There have been violent disputes with many gods. It was a terrifying and moving sight. ""
Its consequences
“When the first light of dawn fell slowly across a gray sky,” one survivor recalls, the coastal region was “a field of flat houses, babies crying”. The dead were everywhere. Those who survived could not believe what they had seen and experienced. Complaints from those whose loved ones have disappeared mingled with the silence that followed. Slowly, they got up and left, confused, looking for something and nothing. ""
Shortly after the disaster ended, civil and military agencies launched rescue, relief and rehabilitation measures around the world. Technical and material assistance began to flow. A reporter noted that in the affected areas, they "could work side by side to dig the dead and the dead from the fallen rubble."
Bad times