Mt. Pinatubo

Twenty years ago today at 9:15 a.m., I was walking across the VC-5 ramp at Cubi Point in the Philippines to my assigned aircraft. I was about to lead a flight of A-4's to Okinawa. My head was down when one of my wingmen came over pointing to the north and saying, "Look!" A massive plume of light gray ash against a pale blue sky was rising quickly into the air through about 10,000 feet. The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo had begun.

By the time I got my gear into my plane, did a quick pre-flight and lit the engine on fire, the light gray cloud was turning darker, shooting up through 20,000 feet at least and falling on the northern shores of Subic Bay. When we reached the hold short, it was so dark across the bay it looked like the blackest of night and it was coming our way. And we had to hold five minutes to wait for the wake turbulence of a DC-10 that had just taken off ahead of us to settle down.

Two months before in early March, I had launched with John "Horse" Cochrane for a Cope Thunder event. Cope Thunder was an Air Force exercise out of Clark Air Base that took place eight times a year. We flew 150 miles west to Scarborough Shoals, found a KC-10 tanker, and topped off our fuel.

We were the bombing package for an attack on the Crow Valley bomb range on the northwest side of Clark. At the commencement of the exercise, we dived down to around 100 feet and flew in across the South China Sea with an F-16 escort overhead. We skirted over the mountains on the peninsula on the west side of Subic Bay, and then headed north to cross a ridge of mountains and drop down onto the target.

As we ingressed we came into what at first we thought was a fog, which was unusual for that late in the morning, but we had to climb to 3,000 feet to maintain visibility. Then the ground under us began to look almost like it was covered with snow. Finally getting across the ridge we saw five plumes of smoke rising from the northern side of the peaks and realized what we were seeing was ash. We were the first to see the initial eruption from the air.

On June 12, we got our flight airborne and another after us just before the airfield was closed. I diverted my flight from the normal departure and turned south to circle around the ash cloud. We turned north and passed about ten miles to the east of Clark. As we climbed through 27,000 feet, I snapped a picture of the eruption. The top of the cloud was around 45,000 feet and as it grew and expanded it took on the appearance of an atomic explosion.

The Air Force had evacuated all Clark personnel to the Subic Bay Naval Station because Clark was only ten miles from the summit of the mountain. Subic was 20 miles to the south-southwest. Interestingly enough, on that morning Clark was in the sunshine while westerly winds blew the smoke and ash toward Subic Bay and the South China Sea.

The next two days saw smaller eruptions, but ash fallout was landing on Clark and Angeles City as well. Then early in the morning on June 15, the big one came. Mt. Pinatubo blew ash, dust, dirt, and stones over 90,000 feet in the air. Over one hundred earthquakes shook the ground during the day and the power went out.

Then as if the eruption wasn't enough, a typhoon rolled right over northern Luzon adding rain and wind to the mix. Great red streaks of lightning slashed horizontally across the blackened sky. Clark and Subic Bay were in total darkness for 36 hours. The ash fell with a consistency of cement collapsing thousands of buildings in Angeles, Olongapo, and other surrounding towns and villages and on the military bases. Hundreds of people were killed.

My future wife's home was 18 miles directly south of the volcano. She had been sleeping soundly when around 10 a.m. her mother woke her up. Leah sleepily wondered what was the problem in the middle of the night and was shocked to know it was the middle of the morning. And then they felt the earthquakes. On a battery powered radio they heard an announcement warning people to clean the ash off their roofs.

Their house was on a slope, and by taking a 2x12 board, they were able to place it on the high side and climb up to the roof to sweep the sand and ash off. Fortunately they did because one of the rafters in the house had already cracked.

In Manila, 60 miles away, a friend of ours, Brenda Garren, went to sleep with her window open to enjoy the cool evening breeze. When she woke in the morning her bedroom was under a two inch layer of dust.

Two hundred miles to the south in northern Palawan, missionaries Harry and Ann Rogers woke to a motor tricycle driving up the lane to their hospital. Their worker came to warn them, "It's raining milk!" The ash mixed with the rain was coming down in a milky white color.

Anticipating the fresh water supply at the naval base would be contaminated, the Navy directed a destroyer (the name of which I don't remember and I don't have my resources to look it up at the moment) to head for Subic Bay. It arrived in the middle of the eruption. The captain ordered all air vents sealed with duct tape and the ship steamed into the darkness and found its way into the bay using sonar. And fortunate it was the ship was there. It's water desalinization plant was the only source of water on the base for weeks.

Clark Air Base was a loss and the Air Force walked away no questions asked. Subic Bay, however, had something the Air Force didn't have: Seabees. The Seabees said, "We can fix this," and they went about fixing it. They cleared the mud off the roads and the airfield, repaired the water treatment plants, and in two weeks Cubi Point was open for limited operations.

The devastation was indescribable. There was an area around Mt. Pinatubo on the west and north sides that was a series of deep jungle covered ravines. Nobody lived in there and we used to call it "Prehistoric Valley" because it was so primitive it looked like a place you would find dinosaurs. The eruption filled those valleys, some of them several hundred feet deep, including the Crow Valley bombing range. The forestation was gone and flying over it, it looked like what you'd expect to see on the moon.

The rainy season usually starts in June, but the rains were late coming that year. When they finally did, they started washing all the dirt out of those valleys. Just as some people thought they were going to move back into their homes and rebuild, lahar (volcanic mud flows) swept down the valleys and carried away or buried entire towns.

Leah and I had been trying to make wedding plans, but there was a ton of red tape to go through. Mt. Pinatubo literally made it tons worse. We had to get certain documents from the Local Civil Registrars Office, but the building was destroyed and the records were lost. When the eruption was over, we had to start all over.

When we finally got married, we had planned our honeymoon in Hong Kong. But to get to Manila we had to take a Victory Liner bus, and rains had left the entire country side north of Manila under two feet of water, and the highway under several feet of mud. What was normally a two and a half hour trip took us seven hours.

A year later, almost to the day, I flew my last flight in an A-4. It was a freebie. I went out sight seeing all of my favorite places in northern Luzon, including flying down a flat river bed at 350 knots to see how bold I was and how low I could get. I had set my radar altimeter at 25 feet and it was flashing at me before I climbed out. I finished the flight going where no man had gone before.

The rains had left a lake inside the Pinatubo crater, but steam continued to rise from several vents and a strong sulfuric smell pervaded the air. On the northwest side of the crater was a wide, deep crevasse. The water from the lake flowed down through the crevasse and out into Iba Valley. I got down into the valley at 100 feet and flew up the crevasse into the crater at about 450 knots. Turbulence was so bad as I flew through the crevasse that I had to climb slightly, but then as I reached the center of the lake I pulled my nose straight up and flew out of the crater.

A few days ago, almost 20 years exactly, I went back to Mt. Pinatubo. My son, Jonathan, and I, and some friends went up to Crow Valley and took a jeep across the valley and up the ravine as far as we could go. Over the years the rains have basically washed away all the mud that had filled the bomb range, and although the target areas aren't there anymore, I recognized the spot where the old simulated airstrip, buildings, and fake planes sat waiting for the bombs to drop, and the circular target at the head of the valley.

The Philippine Air Force is still using the area where the circular target was for a weapon's range, and on our way out we had to wait 45 minutes for two OV-10's to strafe, lay smoke and shoot rockets.

As we got out of the target area and into the ravine we had to drive up the river, around boulders, across the leftover mud, and through the water. We went several miles until we reached the extent that the vehicles could go, and then we continued on foot. We still had three or so miles to traverse across very rocky, sandy, and muddy ground, and shallow water runoff so wide there was no way to avoid getting our feet wet.

The walls of the ravine were in places 200 feet high or more, and looked to be plastered with mud and volcanic ash. In places great heaps of mud had fallen to the bottom, and no doubt with every rain more of it continues to fall and wash away. We finally reached a rest area at the top of the canyon. Our guide told us that when they originally built the three pagoda like pavilions, they had been able to drive all the way up the canyon to that spot. So much mud has washed away that now they can't even get close.

We hiked on another 15 minutes until we crossed the ridge, and before us was a magnificent valley with a deep, lime green lake. At the top a little resort like area had been built with a refreshment stand, and a long, steep, stone staircase went down 169 steps to the shores of the crater lake. The water was cool and we were hot and soaked from the humidity. We had not come prepared to swim, but when we got there the temptation was too great, so stripping down to our skivvies, we jumped in.

We were in a bay on the east side of the crater. The crevasse I flew in through was around a point to the west and we couldn't see the valley from where we were. The water, although it looked beautifully clear from above, was so murky you couldn't see five feet in it. Our friend, Pastor Jihan Senina, and I swam the quarter mile or so across the bay to sheer cliffs on the other side and then back.

I couldn't help but think how beautiful, relaxing, and restful, was this place that had caused so much trouble and devastation so many years ago. And I was reminded that God will make all things beautiful in His time (Ecclesiastes 3:11).