By Marilou Guieb / Correspondent
ON July 16 survivors of the earthquake on that fateful day 25 years ago gathered for a commemorative Mass at the Girl Scouts of the Philippines and for a get-together to catch up with each other on how life has been since.
The shared harrowing experience and the unforgettable days of waiting for rescue to come and their extraordinary means to survive these dark moments have forged a bond among them that only they as like souls can understand.
The BusinessMirror was able to talk to two survivors and their tales of gratitude for what they call their second lease on life.
Pedrito Dy was the chef of Hyatt Hotel and recalls that somehow fate had something to with his being trapped in the rubble of the collapsed hotel because he was about to leave the hotel but came back because of a prodding of a friend.
He left the house with his wife still asleep that morning with no clue that, in the next two weeks, his wife would wait in vigil outside the hotel not knowing if her husband laid dead under the heavy slabs of concrete.
Dy was on his way home that day when he met a fellow body builder who persuaded him to workout back in the gym of Hyatt Hotel. Dy had just finished instructing one body-building student and was seated when the first tremor struck which they ignored. But right after the earth shook violently. The 7.7-Richter scale strong earthquake that lasted for 45 seconds collapsed more than 80 buildings in the city within minutes.
Dy recalls that it was hard to run because the shaking felt like a racing horse. They got to the door of the gym and he saw the building falling, then everything went dark. He could not see anything and there was only the screaming and chaos and the sound of people dying. He was still upright but the floor above kept lowering until he could only be on a lying position. His feet were trapped by a person who lay heavy on his feet. Hope started to fail him and he asked the Lord to take him quickly and not make him suffer. Then a big bloc of cement started to fall, and by a miracle stopped just above him. On hindsight he felt it was like the Lord speaking for him to hold on because it was this dangerous slab that actually protected him from other heavy debris.
It rained heavily the following days making retrieval difficult, but it was the trickling raindrops that Dy lived on for several days.
Dy wore a watch on which he set the alarm and he knew he had programmed it to sound off for 10 days. By the fifth day, he vomitted and lost consciousness, and thereafter drifted in and out. He was in the company of a man and a lady he held conversations with but their voices grew fainter each day. The man only lasted two days and on the fifth day, the lady had become silent too. They had agreed that whoever survives among them will go visit the Cathedral. For the next 10 days or so he was alone with his thoughts.
A big fly started to circle him instead of the dead around him. “The fly landed on my foot, then my leg, and then on my shoulder. And I wondered if this was a message. I told the fly, ‘Tell them outside I am here.’” In three seconds he heard the sounds which turned out to be rescuers below him. Rescuers had actually given up on rescue as two weeks had already passed. Dy started to shout and a certain Peter told him to tap a metal on anything and they followed the sound. It was 8 p.m. then and Dy was finally pulled out at 4:30 in the morning and quickly rushed to a hospital in Manila. I felt my companions who died stayed with me in the hospital, he said, as they kept coming in his dreams.