BATANGAS CITY— The images of death in the aftermath of the 1965 eruption of Taal Volcano are still giving 73-year old
chills and nightmares.
He may have already seen enough as a teen helper for a funeral parlor in Taal then but the deformities and the extent of damage inflicted by the pyroclastic materials on the cadavers he was asked to retrieve were really the ones that make him shiver.
He said he would not die that way. He said nobody deserves that kind of ending.
So when he felt the same tremor, heard the same rumblings and saw the same ash plumes on Sunday afternoon, he immediately responded to the first thing that comes out of his mind: flee.
“Bumalik bigla yung takot, yung mga nakita kong bangkay. Sabi ko ayaw kong mangyari yun sa akin, sa pamilya ko (The scary memory suddenly came back, the cadavers I saw. I told myself I don’t want such thing to happen to me, to my family),” King, Pablo’s nickname, told Tempo in an interview in an evacuation center here.
He then started telling a story about an old but wealthy woman in their town who was among those hit by the first volley of pyroclastic materials from Taal Volcano in September 1965.
“We were asked to retrieve the body near the rice field. It took us a few hours of digging using bare hands and sticks before we found the body. How she died was horrifying,” said Lolo King.
Amid the ashfall and Taal volcano rumblings, he said a few more bodies which he said had died probably due to intense heat while on their way to the funeral parlor.
“I thought my memory of that woman ended with the recovery of her body. I was wrong. While I was washing the cadaver, that was the first time I saw how parts of her skin flowing with water and ashes,” said Lolo King.
The cadaver of the old woman that King described was among the more than 50 bodies recovered during the 1965 Taal Volcano eruption. More than 130 others were reported missing.
That is the reason, according to King, why in the first signs that Taal Volcano is rumbling, he and his family immediately fled their home and sought refuge at the compound of the Batangas Provincial Capitol here.
On their way using the passenger jeepney owned by his relative, he explained to his family why evacuating early is really important.
Aside from the horrible deaths he saw, King also narrated stories of how the bad side of some people naturally comes out in times of disaster.
“After the eruption, we heard a lot of stories that more people would have been saved if only some of those who fled from the island were not too selfish. We were told that some of the banca owners only saved themselves and prevented others from boarding,” Lolo King said.
But he said that was a very long time ago and those were sad stories he wanted to forget. All he wanted to remember and impart to his family was the lesson he learned from it— of early evacuation as a virtue.
He said now he could sleep, because they are safe now. (Aaron Recuenco)
