Trapped In Quake-Hit School

By CARLOS DAVE B. GARCIA and BRYAN EDWARD G. VILLASANA

July 15, 2012, 6:59pm

CABANATUAN CITY— Jessica delos Reyes was in the middle of a Math exam when the magnitude 7 earthquake struck on July 16, 1990.

The 14-year-old high school sophomore was on the third floor of the six-story Christian College of the Philippines (CCP) in the heart of this city.

“I thought it was the end of the world. There was thunder and lightning, as if there was a deluge,” she recalled last week


The teacher told Jessica and her classmates to stay in their seats. But when the first aftershock hit, the teacher fled, leaving her class behind.

Instinctively Jessica and her classmates made a dash for the stairs. But one her classmates, her cousin Rosalia, hesitated, saying she had go back to the classroom.

“She had left her umbrella in the room,” Jessica said. “She wanted to retrieve it because her mother will scold her if she lost it."

The short delay saved their lives. “The stairs gave way. We would have been killed,” Jessica said.

In just minutes, the CCP schoolbuilding crumpled, the floors flattened like pancakes.

Scores of schoolchildren were trapped in the collapsed building, among them Jessica.

In the dark, she and surviving classmates crawled through the rubble in search for a way out. Jessica remembered crawling over the bodies of dead students. She herself was hurt; a nail from a broken armchair had pierced her thigh.

Ignoring the pain, Jessica pulled the nail out.

She and her classmates decided that instead of groping about looking for an opening in the rubble, they would stay put and wait to be rescued. While they waited, Jessica led her classmates in praying the rosary.

Outside the CCP building, frantic relatives of the schoolchildren gathered, trying to find a way to get inside. Many brought with them tools to dig out the trapped students.

Jessica’s father, Remegio Rangcapan, did not know if she was still inside the building and if she was still alive. He had checked the hospitals and morgues but his daughter wasn’t there.

Every time a body was pulled from the wreckage, Rangcapan would nervously ask around who it was.

He said that deep inside, he knew that Jessica was still alive. ”I told myself she’s an energetic girl. She’ll survive,” he said.

It was about 9 p.m. when Jessica glimpsed a faint light in the darkness. It was from a group of rescuers that had broken through.

Someone shouted if there were people alive beneath the rubble. There were seven in Jessica’s group, but she shouted back that they were 50, believing the rescuers would act with more haste if there were more people trapped.

As soon as they got out, Jessica and her classmates were rushed to a nearby hospital. She would later find out that 17 of her 21 cousins, who were also studying in CCP, perished in the disaster.

The Delos Reyes-Rangcapan clan also had the highest number of casualties because Barangay Bagong Sikat, Cabanatuan City, where they resided, suffered heavy damage from the quake.

Government officials, led by then President Corazon Aquino, flew to Cabanatuan to check on the area and offer help to the victims.

Twenty-two years later, Jessica, now 36 years old, is married with three kids. She still resides in the same compound where her family lived when the earthquake sruck.

“I’m emotionally stronger now. There’s still the fear, but it’s not as intense as before,” she said.

Still, she tries to avoid getting close to where the CCP once stood, now a commercial area.

It’s her way of blotting out the terrifying moments of July 15, 1990 from her memory.