A Tale of Noah
By Rex Catubig
WITH the onrush of high tide, storm surge, and floods that have engulfed the consciousness, that have made life miserable, and have dragged along monumental debris of scandal, I am drawn to haunting memories of catastrophes in the past, similarly destructive and horrific.
Yet I was never in any of them. Though I am certain that they are not false memories.
As a young boy, I was raised on an old folk tale revolving around the massive brick columns that lay on the riverbank of Calmay–where we played “erelan” and “amotan” in mischievous defiance of warnings about “pugot” and “mangibambano” that might put us in harm’s way.
The contextual theme was the Great Flood of 1935, way before I was born, that undermined the foundation of the Colegio de San Alberto Magno, causing it to be demolished. The same massive flood swept away the epochal Franklin Bridge, consequently cutting off and isolating our barrio from the Poblacion.
Thirty-seven years later, in June 1972, while I was in Manila, another big flood hit the city and submerged it in murky floodwater that reached almost midway the grand staircase of the City Hall. Worse, the raging river current chomped a big chunk of Barrio Calmay, eating up almost a third of its riverbank and reducing its width.
Then in July 1990, just a month after I arrived in Los Angeles, a powerful temblor wrecked most of the city proper, splitting a bridge in half, cleaving street surfaces that swallowed parked vehicles, and causing liquefaction that gushed muddy water that reeked of sewage and sulphur.
But all these seem to pale in comparison and certainly no match to the cataclysmic natural disaster that devastated the rustic town of Mabini, some thirty kilometers away. I remember this as a 3rd grader, aghast upon hearing it on the radio news broadcast.
It was Friday, July 7 in 1957. At around two o’clock at dawn, as the residents of the hilly town were deep asleep, lulled by the tiresome toil of previous days winding down to the weekend, a sudden surge of flash flood came cascading down. The villagers never had a chance to wake up. The rampaging water cut a swath of destruction, devouring whole villages along the way, burying people and property in thick mud. In all, it plunged two-thirds of the town under dark muddy water.
The calamity was blamed on Typhoon Wendy whose torrential rains inundated the Ange and Balincaguin rivers
As morning broke, 200 were found dead due to drowning. Another 250 were reported missing. But as the day went by, the fatality rose to around 1000.
It was such a shocking calamity–leaving in its wake death and destruction in what was one of the worst floods in the history of the province.
Thus, it hugged the national headlines–and the limelight as well, as it was referred to as the birthplace of Gloria Romero, one the reigning movie queens of the time and Mabini’s pride. I believe a movie adaptation of the dawn disaster was subsequently made and shown on the silver screen. But unfortunately, I cannot recall the film title.
But really, if I am allowed to make a choice, I’d rather forget and have no memory of all these heartbreaking catastrophes.
I wish they never happened and will never happen again–in my lifetime or the next.
But again, on June 15, 1991, Mt Pinatubo had a climactic violent eruption that ricocheted around the world, blanketed the sky with sulfuric ash, and wreaked unimaginable havoc in its wake.
I was eleven thousand miles away, far away from the center, but the volcano’s phreatic explosion haunts me to this day. Because in its aftermath, months after it occurred, I received a long letter from a friend narrating her traumatic experience being caught in the midst of mudrain and spectral darkness. It was but for the grace of God, that she and her husband survived the horrifying road ordeal physically unscathed. Yet the emotional and psychological toll it took was indescribable.
I experienced all these vicariously. These nightmares are seared on my consciousness. As if I were really there. And in my mind and in my heart, I was there all the time, inconsolably helpless, like in a movie reel that keeps on rolling and playing, repeating scene after scene in an infinite remembrance.
My soul is forever drowned in the memories of nature unleashing its wrath.
But what role these persistent memories play in our collective psyche is something left to be fathomed.
The floods will never go away. Predictably, Noah has to keep building the Ark. And to paraphrase Miriam Santiago’s ominous irreverent take on the issue, God need not lift a finger to create the Great Deluge, because the flood control contractors have beat Him to it
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