This photo shows how the cars in a vacant lot looked after Mt. Pinatubo erupted 17 years ago. I was staying a hundred kilometers away from the volcano so I didn't hear or feel the eruption. All I experienced was darkness at around past 3 in the afternoon but I just thought it was going to rain very hard that afternoon since there was a typhoon somewhere in the north. I did not catch the breaking news on tv because I was doing some household chores. It was later in the evening while I was preparing dinner that I noticed the top of the dinning table to be full of dust. I looked around the living room and all the furnitures had dust all over them. I went out of the house and it was then that I realized that something was wrong because the car, the plants and the grass was all covered with dust. I rushed to the tv to check what was going on and it was there that reports came one after the other about the most violent eruption of the 20th century. I couldn't do anything much since it was very dark so I just closed all the windows of the house to prevent ashes from coming in and when morning came, I was so shocked to see the thick ashfall all over the house and my surroundings. My hubby was out of town at that time so I only had my dad and a nephew clearing the ashfall from the roof to the ground. It took them all day to gather them in a big mound in front of our house.
This is one very memorable event in my lifetime and I am very thankful to God that the residents of all these affected towns have now recovered from financial losses and have moved on with their lives even if they had to relocate themselves.
