Things were shaky today for people in the Midwest. A 5.4 magnitude earthquake rumbled through a number states in the early morning hours, followed by a smaller aftershock several hours later.
From what I have read, the quake was felt as far away as Atlanta, Georgia. It was definitely felt by a friend of mine in Lexington, Kentucky. However, my mom who lives about 200 miles north of the quake area, didn't feel it. She was asleep like a lot of people at the time the the temblor rolled through. But something woke her at the time of the quake...probably it rolling through.
I remember my first "felt" quake. It was in 1968. At the time, I was working in an animal hospital on the south side of Chicago. The animals in the back room where I worked started acting strange, then the cage doors started rattling and I could feel a rumbling. I could almost hear something, but the critters in the place were making way too much noise for me to know for sure. Not long after that, one of the front office people came back to tell me there had been an earthquake.
Several years later, I was in the Air Force, stationed in extremely seismically active, Alaska. My first quake there was an interesting one. I was at an off-base mobile home where myself and two co-workers lived to get away from the barracks life. I had just come back from a dental appointment, and sat down in a swivel-rocker to read my mail. The noon newscast was just beginning and suddenly, I saw the announcer dive under his desk. A split second later, just after I had opened a letter from a friend in Ohio, my chair started swiveling and rocking on its own. Then it was over. I looked around and then looked at the television screen and had to laugh. The announcer had poked his head up over the edge, looked around, then got back in his chair and said, "If you don't know, the Anchorage area has just experienced an earthquake. More on that as it comes in."
Several months later, during the early morning and I was out on the tarmac refueling a C-141 Starlifter. At the time, I was watching a distance aircraft in the landing pattern. Suddenly, I started swaying side-to-side and I looked towards the control tower. I couldn't see it moving, but I could see ripples in the runway. I looked again at the aircraft in the pattern and it was still coming in. When I went back to our dispatch office, I was told there had been an earthquake.
There were a few more minor rockers during my time there, but after I left Alaska, I didn't experience another earthquake until I was reassigned from Texas to northern Italy. Prior to my arrival there, there had been a series of quakes which brought devastation to a number of towns and I was heading into the area of the worst damage. After my arrival, things were rather quiet. The area was being cleaned up and life was returning to normal. Then another quake rolled through. This quake occurred early in the morning as most of us slept. However, it woke everyone in the barracks. I know, because as soon as it finished, the entire building was heard to say, "Holy shit...did you feel that?" Then a line formed at the urinals.
For me, that quake was interesting. I woke just before the shaking began. At that time, one side of my bed was up against a wall. Hanging on the wall, right above where my crotch area was (and still is), was a 4-point, mounted deer head I got in Texas. As soon as the shaking started, I looked up at the mount and said, "Don't fall...Don't fall," over and over. It didn't fall, but it did get moved to a different part of my section of the barracks room.
Later in the morning, I was at work and was being interviewed by a radio announcer from the Southern European Network, a division of the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, in Vicenza, Italy, about 100 miles south of Aviano, where I was. I recall the announcer asking me what the morning quake was like and as soon as he finished, an aftershock hit. I had just reached for my little, yellow plastic coffee cup and couldn't immediately figure out why it kept moving just out of my reach. Then it hit me...EARTHQUAKE! I stood up and looked at my supervisor who was rushing out of the office and was frozen with what I was seeing.
I worked in a cinder block building and the wall I was staring at, was painted cinder block. I was watching waves move through the cinder blocks. I could see them actually bending and not crumbling...and I couldn't figure it out. Then the shaking stopped and slowly made my way outside the building. The entire cast of characters who worked in the headquarters for the 40th Tactical Group was out there. I was the last to leave the building. About 30 minutes later when engineers had given the building an okay for occupancy, we were allowed back in. More rumblers moved through the region in the days which followed, but none like that one.
I didn't feel anymore earthquakes until I was reassigned to Anchorage, Alaska in 1983. I hadn't been on base for more than two weeks, when a very strong, quick quake occurred. I was just walking into my office when it hit and almost as quickly, finished. When I entered the office, I saw the person I was replacing halfway out the window of the building. He had a mortal fear of quakes and would do anything to avoid them, including jumping out of a third floor office window to make sure the building didn't collapse on him. But the quake finished before he could leap, and he was spared the consequences of what might have happened on landing.
It was in Alaska, where something really strange happened regarding an earthquake. It was a year or so after I had arrived there. I was in a new job as the community relations advisor for the base. I was sitting at my desk in the office I shared with our media relations NCO, when I felt dizzy and put my head down. My office mate noticed something strange with me and asked if I was okay. I looked up at him and said, "In 24 hours, we will have a 5.2 earthquake," and I went back to work on some paperwork. The NCO with me, shook his head and went back to what he was doing. This took place at 3 pm.
The next day at 2:58 pm, a 5.4 magnitude earthquake hit. I had missed it by two minutes and two degrees of magnitude. However, soon as it finished, the person in the office with me gathered some notebooks, forms and pens and walked out. He went to another of the offices and told everyone what had happened. For the next several minutes, people would walk by my office and look inside at me, then walk away. The person in the office with me during that incident, refused to work with me after that. Our office areas were rearranged and I was considered a really strange person by everyone. Sorry, Tom. I didn't mean to upset you.
After I left Alaska, I felt minor quakes in Honduras while I was on temporary assignment there. None of them were big, just little shakers everyone laughed at. But in the summer of 1990, I was in The Philippines. On a nice July day, I worked a little late in the office and when I finished, went out to the bus stop to await transportation to my barracks. As I stood there talking to two Filipina women, a quake hit. It was so strong, and so long, it actually knocked me on my ass and began bouncing me around. As I sat on the roadway acting like a rubber ball with the quake, I recall looking towards our legal building across the street. It was a cinder block building and again, I could see waves moving through the cinder blocks.
As soon at that quake was finished, I got up, brushed myself off and went right back to my office. As I entered the front part of the office, my boss was walking through the door. He looked at me and said, "Where did you come from?" I told him I was at the bus stop when it hit and then the phone rang...and rang...and rang...and rang. It didn't stop ringing for several hours. By that time, several coworkers were in helping out and I was sent to the command post to help coordinate things there and answer media queries during the night hours. I worked the night hours there for six days before things returned to normal.
That quake was a doozy. It registered 7.8 on the Richter Scale and produced thousands of minor aftershocks. And personally, I believe it was the beginning of the end for Clark AB, as less than a year later, Mt. Pinatubo erupted and destroyed most of the base.
I haven't felt another quake since I left The Philippines in November 1990. However, in 1994, I was on the Oregon coast with my nephew. We were talking and walking along the shoreline when he asked me something. I don't remember his question, but I remember my answer. I looked at him and said, "I could tell you in two hours, California will be hit by one hell of an earthquake...but you wouldn't believe me." Two hours or so later, California was devastated by the Northridge Earthquake.
These days, I keep my thoughts to myself and hope someday to feel the frantic rumblings of a quake again. After all, they are Mother Nature's roller coaster rides.
Showing posts with label Aviano AB. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aviano AB. Show all posts
Friday, April 18, 2008
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Seeing is believing...or is it?
In my life, I have seen a lot of really cool things. Anytime I want, I can close my eyes and see each one of them as they happened...they were that memorable.
Take the day I was sitting on the edge of a cliff near Thule AB, Greenland with several friends. The view of the ice over Baffin Bay with Saunders Island in the distance was nice enough. But then someone pointed out a small, dark, moving dot on the ice to the south. All of us sat there, keeping an eye on the dot as it got larger and larger. It wasn't long before we realized we were watching an Inuit Eskimo on his dog sled heading home after a hunt. We watched him pass by in total silence. When he then became a small, dark, moving dot on the ice to the north, we left. No one said a word. It was an amazing sight.
Months later, I was down near the docks at Thule when a sound from North Star Bay (the small bay Thule was near) drew my attention. I looked up and at that moment, watched an iceberg roll over in the water. I continued to watch as waves of water moved out from around the berg and washed onto a nearby shore. Between the sound the rolling iceberg, it was an amazing sight.
A couple of years earlier, I was at Fairchild AFB, Washington. It was the day of the annual air show at the base, May 18, 1980. But I never saw the air show. No one did. That morning, Mt. St. Helens, a volcano 300 miles west of where I was, erupted. By the time I got to the show, there was a massive, black cloud of ash on the western horizon growing larger and larger. By 2 pm that formerly beautiful Saturday, it was pitch black outside. I watched it get darker and darker and watched as the sun turned blue in color. I watched as lightning in the colors of pink, green, orange, red and other colors, streaked through the dark sky. And I watched as gray flakes of ash fell around me. In the end, five inches of ash lay on the ground. It was an amazing sight.
Two years before that, I was stationed at Aviano AB, Italy. The base was located at the foot of the Dolomite Mountains, part of the Italian Alps. It was a great place to be stationed. One evening, after I had finished working on the base newspaper (my job was editor of the paper), I was returning from Pordenone, where the paper was printed, when I noticed a thunderstorm forming about midway up the mountains. After I had arrived at a bar I frequented, I went in and found my friends sitting in a booth near the door. I took a seat with them which had a good view out the window of the storm in the mountains. Now, if you know anything about me, you know I love a good storm. So I sat there and watched as lightning strikes flashed, and listened as the thunder echoed through the area. Then I saw something I had never seen before. I saw ball lightning. It wasn't little eight inch balls of glowing plasma or anything like that. It was lightning rolled into a ball. And it wasn't just one...it was three balls. They slowly fell from the sky looking like glowing spaghetti rolled into a loose ball. When the three objects landed, they bounced once or twice then sat on the ground. Because they landed almost on top of a nearby car, I could estimate their sizes. Two were maybe four feet in diameter, possibly three, and the third was twice their size. I was frozen to what I was seeing out the window. For maybe 10 seconds, the three balls sat on the ground, sparkling. I don't know any other way to describe it, but they crackled and sparkled, and suddenly, they exploded. The lights in the bar dimmed, the sound of massive thunder echoed through the land and the balls of lightning were gone. It was an amazing sight.
In October 1973, I was nearing the end of my first term of service in the US Air Force and was stationed at Kincheloe AFB, in the upper peninsula of Michigan. The base was situated in the middle of the northern woods not far from Interstate 75. On a particularly, windy day, I was outside with some friends. We were trying to toss a football around, when a sound was heard in the trees. At first, no one knew what the sound was. But our confusion was short-lived as suddenly, millions of brown, dry leaves, being pushed by the wind, came out of the trees and covered the open area we were standing in. The leaves were 12-18 inches deep and moving as fast as the wind, maybe 25 mph. The leaves flowed all around us and continued for a good 10 minutes. When I would look down at my feet, I would get dizzy looking at the movement of the leaves. I squatted down and put my hands in the path of the oncoming leaves and they would flow up my arms and over my shoulders and continue their journey to the other side of the open area. One of my friends said it looked like I was a lump of leaves in the middle of an ocean of leaves. And as quickly as the leaves arrived, they were gone, back into the trees on the other side. A look around the area we were in showed not a leaf to be seen. It was one of the most amazing sights I had ever experienced.
These are but a few of the wonders I have seen. I have been through earthquakes which did strange things, I was less than 10 miles away from one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions of the 20th Century, I have watched some of the most amazing meteor showers ever seen and I have seen animals do some of the strangest things.
Most of what I have seen is hard to believe. But they happened and they happened to me.
I am just soooo glad I was in the right place, at the right time, to see all the amazing things I have seen.
Take the day I was sitting on the edge of a cliff near Thule AB, Greenland with several friends. The view of the ice over Baffin Bay with Saunders Island in the distance was nice enough. But then someone pointed out a small, dark, moving dot on the ice to the south. All of us sat there, keeping an eye on the dot as it got larger and larger. It wasn't long before we realized we were watching an Inuit Eskimo on his dog sled heading home after a hunt. We watched him pass by in total silence. When he then became a small, dark, moving dot on the ice to the north, we left. No one said a word. It was an amazing sight.
Months later, I was down near the docks at Thule when a sound from North Star Bay (the small bay Thule was near) drew my attention. I looked up and at that moment, watched an iceberg roll over in the water. I continued to watch as waves of water moved out from around the berg and washed onto a nearby shore. Between the sound the rolling iceberg, it was an amazing sight.
A couple of years earlier, I was at Fairchild AFB, Washington. It was the day of the annual air show at the base, May 18, 1980. But I never saw the air show. No one did. That morning, Mt. St. Helens, a volcano 300 miles west of where I was, erupted. By the time I got to the show, there was a massive, black cloud of ash on the western horizon growing larger and larger. By 2 pm that formerly beautiful Saturday, it was pitch black outside. I watched it get darker and darker and watched as the sun turned blue in color. I watched as lightning in the colors of pink, green, orange, red and other colors, streaked through the dark sky. And I watched as gray flakes of ash fell around me. In the end, five inches of ash lay on the ground. It was an amazing sight.
Two years before that, I was stationed at Aviano AB, Italy. The base was located at the foot of the Dolomite Mountains, part of the Italian Alps. It was a great place to be stationed. One evening, after I had finished working on the base newspaper (my job was editor of the paper), I was returning from Pordenone, where the paper was printed, when I noticed a thunderstorm forming about midway up the mountains. After I had arrived at a bar I frequented, I went in and found my friends sitting in a booth near the door. I took a seat with them which had a good view out the window of the storm in the mountains. Now, if you know anything about me, you know I love a good storm. So I sat there and watched as lightning strikes flashed, and listened as the thunder echoed through the area. Then I saw something I had never seen before. I saw ball lightning. It wasn't little eight inch balls of glowing plasma or anything like that. It was lightning rolled into a ball. And it wasn't just one...it was three balls. They slowly fell from the sky looking like glowing spaghetti rolled into a loose ball. When the three objects landed, they bounced once or twice then sat on the ground. Because they landed almost on top of a nearby car, I could estimate their sizes. Two were maybe four feet in diameter, possibly three, and the third was twice their size. I was frozen to what I was seeing out the window. For maybe 10 seconds, the three balls sat on the ground, sparkling. I don't know any other way to describe it, but they crackled and sparkled, and suddenly, they exploded. The lights in the bar dimmed, the sound of massive thunder echoed through the land and the balls of lightning were gone. It was an amazing sight.
In October 1973, I was nearing the end of my first term of service in the US Air Force and was stationed at Kincheloe AFB, in the upper peninsula of Michigan. The base was situated in the middle of the northern woods not far from Interstate 75. On a particularly, windy day, I was outside with some friends. We were trying to toss a football around, when a sound was heard in the trees. At first, no one knew what the sound was. But our confusion was short-lived as suddenly, millions of brown, dry leaves, being pushed by the wind, came out of the trees and covered the open area we were standing in. The leaves were 12-18 inches deep and moving as fast as the wind, maybe 25 mph. The leaves flowed all around us and continued for a good 10 minutes. When I would look down at my feet, I would get dizzy looking at the movement of the leaves. I squatted down and put my hands in the path of the oncoming leaves and they would flow up my arms and over my shoulders and continue their journey to the other side of the open area. One of my friends said it looked like I was a lump of leaves in the middle of an ocean of leaves. And as quickly as the leaves arrived, they were gone, back into the trees on the other side. A look around the area we were in showed not a leaf to be seen. It was one of the most amazing sights I had ever experienced.
These are but a few of the wonders I have seen. I have been through earthquakes which did strange things, I was less than 10 miles away from one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions of the 20th Century, I have watched some of the most amazing meteor showers ever seen and I have seen animals do some of the strangest things.
Most of what I have seen is hard to believe. But they happened and they happened to me.
I am just soooo glad I was in the right place, at the right time, to see all the amazing things I have seen.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Memories of Bad Days
A little more than six years ago, the world changed. Terrorists saw to that.
I'm sure everyone knows where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. I was asleep at the time. On the west coast, it was a little past 8 am and my phone rang. I woke, but as I was pulling myself out of bed, the ringing stopped, so back to the pillow I went. But a moment later, the phone rang again. Still half asleep, I went into the living room and picked up the phone.
"Hello."
"They took out the twin towers."
"Who? Bin Laden?"
"Turn on your TV."
That was extent of the conversation with a friend of mine. After the 1993 bombings, I had expected that group of scumbags to go after the towers again. Bin Laden was logical mastermind for me...even half asleep. I was called moments before the first tower collapsed...and watched the panic which ensued after it and the second tower went down. I spent the rest of the morning like everyone else...watching the news.
As I watched, I thought back to my days in the US Air Force...to the days terrorists went after me. Yes...I was a terrorist target.
The first time it happened was in Italy in 1977. The Brigate Rosse, or Red Brigade was terrorizing the people of northern Italy. I was then stationed at Aviano AB, in the northeast portion of Italy, near the Red Brigade area of operations. They worked out of Milan, Italy. Their tactics were not to kill, but to maim. They would shoot their targets in the knee, known as "knee-capping," which would in effect cripple the person. Their targets initially, were journalists who wrote negative articles about them. Later on, they changed their modus operandi and got into kidnapping and murder. But that isn't what this story is about.
One day, I was called to the office of the Carabinieri, the Italian State Police. When I arrived, our Security Police commander, base commander and few other people who I don't recall were present. I was told the Red Brigade had issued a threat to "knee-cap" an American journalist. Since my job at the time was that of editor of The Vigileer, the base newspaper for Aviano AB, there was the possibility I could be targeted. There were more American military journalists at an Army post near Vicenza, Italy and I am sure they were told the same thing I was.
I was told since Aviano was an open base, it would be a lot easier for the Red Brigade to get to me. The Carabinieri informed me what to watch for, and what to do if I saw anything suspicious. Then they told me to limit my trips off base. Well, that was almost impossible for me, since my newspaper was put together and printed in Pordenone, Italy, about 10 miles away and I had to be at the printing plant the two days prior to publishing the paper. I told them that, and told them I would keep an close eye on my surroundings and then asked if there was anything else because I had work to do. They mentioned things to watch for again and I went back to my office.
For the next three weeks, whenever I saw a car with plates from Milan, Italy in my rear view mirror, or parked near where I was going, I changed my plans. I would perform a scouting mission before I parked my car looking for Milan plated vehicles. Sometimes I would see a nearby Carabinieri vehicle parked near where I was, sometimes I wouldn't. I would think that they were watching me and they probably were. I didn't mind...I liked my knees.
Then, on a bright, sunny Saturday morning, a rail car on a supply train heading towards Aviano AB from the station in Pordenone, blew up. A couple of hours after the explosion, the Red Brigade claimed responsibility. In their communique, they said that rather than "knee-capping" someone who would be replaced, they wanted to hurt the Americans where it hurt most...by blowing up some of our needed supplies. So they planted a bomb on a rail car they knew was headed towards Aviano, set the timer and waited. Had the bomb gone off at the supply depot on base, it might have been a different story. But bomb went off before the car arrived on base. The damage it did, didn't hurt the base at all. The car they picked contained nothing but office supplies, something which was held back from news reports.
It hit home to me when I heard about the train incident, that I could easily have been the target instead. I became a lot more aware of my surroundings after that. I also noticed that I didn't see Carabinieri cars as often after that. I figure the Italian police had a lot to do with the change in tactics. It's possible that every time the Red Brigade looked for me, they also found nearby Carabinieri keeping an eye on me. That forced their hand and they changed tactics.
Flash forward to 1989. I was now on a temporary assignment to an Army unit at Soto Cano AB, Honduras. I was the Noncommissioned Officer in Charge of the Public Affairs office. The position had to be an Air Force member, since USAF aircraft flew in and out of the base on a regular basis. If there was an incident, an Air Force person in Public Affairs would be needed to handle the press queries.
Honduras at that time, was having a problem with the Morazanist Front for the Liberation of Honduras or FMLH. They had already made several attacks on the American military stationed in the country, and wanted nothing more than to cause more damage.
One morning, there was a bad auto accident right outside the gates to the base. American medical personnel responded and saved a number of lives. This was a good thing and we wanted to spread the word that we did good things for the country. So after a news release on the incident was translated into Spanish, my boss and I went into Comeyagua, the nearby town, to deliver the release to a number of the news outlets. The third drop point was a radio station near the center of town. When we arrived, my boss, an Army major, said he would be right out. So, I put the vehicle in neutral and waited. Standard operating procedure was to leave someone in the vehicle with the engine running and I was following that directive.
Five minutes passed and the major was still inside. At about ten minutes, I began to wonder what was going on. While I was trying to figure out the scenario, an Honduran walked up to the driver's side of the truck I was in and asked in a very unfriendly tone, if I needed help. I replied I didn't and that I was waiting for someone. The person then walked away from the truck towards the rear and I watched him go into a building about 100 feet away. Moments later, a different person came out of the doorway, paused a moment while he looked at me and took off down the street away from me. I made note of him and continued my vigil around the truck, making plans on what I would do should trouble break out before the major returned.
Less than five minutes later, I observed a pea-soup green Chevy Impala, probably early '70s, I don't remember now, pull up in front of the door and stop. Both front doors opened and the man who a short time earlier ran off in the direction the car came from, stepped out and went inside the building. The driver turned, faced my direction and stretched, then opened the back driver's side door and leaned in to do something. As he did that, the man who left the car moments earlier, along with the man who came to my truck earlier and third man came out of the building. One opened the rear passenger side door, while the other two climbed in the front and leaned over the seat to do something in the back seat area.
I now had a plan for a possible contingency and watched the quartet closely in my rear view mirror. As I watched, my stomach suddenly tightened. I saw the business end of an AK-47 pop up over the top of the front seat. Then it hit me what was going on. They were preparing their weapons they were going to use to attack me. A chill ran up and down my spine, my hands rubbed the cool, blue steel of the only protection I had, and I step on the clutch and slowly put the transmission into first gear. I had decided the moment I saw the first weapon come out, I would give the horn two quick blasts as I sped around a corner 20 feet in front of me. I would make the first left I saw then turn right at each of the first four right turns I came upon. I would then stop and wait. After a short time, if I didn't see the bad guys, I would return to the area of the square, hopefully pick up my boss and get the hell out of there.
Well, I didn't have to use my plan. Right around the time the group had finished what they were doing, and during what I assumed was the leader giving them the game plan for the attack, something happened that I will never forget. A bell rang and from a building on the other side of the street, behind the Chevy, a bunch of young, school aged Honduran children came running out, into the square.
The four guys behind me all jumped out to the street, straightened up and began looking around. Then they started arguing with each other until the original driver said something and the three others got in the car. The driver remained outside the car, staring at me and our eyes locked in the mirror. He stared for a few moments, then with his hand formed in the fashion of a pistol, he pointed it at me and pretended to shoot me. He pretended to blow the smoke out of the barrel, then got in the car and backed down the street a way, turned around and headed out of sight.
I was happy to see those kids. As a few of them walked past my truck on their way home, I reached into my pocket, grabbed all the money I had (Honduran limpiras, both paper and coin) and tossed it into the street and said, Gracias los niños! The children of course, picked it up, a couple tried to return it to me, but I waved it off and the kids for the most part hung nearby until my boss came out. He got in the truck, apologized for being so long and asked what was going on. I told him on the way to our last stop, which he wanted to skip. We then headed back to the safety of the base, where I was debriefed by intelligence.
My third confrontation with terrorists occurred in The Philippines a year and a half later. It was December 1990, and I had just picked up my Filipina girlfriend. We decided to get something to eat at a hotdog near her apartment before we headed out to do whatever it was we had planned to do. There wasn't a lot we could do, and few places we could go. Several months earlier, the New Peoples Army, or NPA, a group of murdering thugs, had walked up to two airmen just outside a hotel near the base and put a .45 round into the back of their heads. The assassinations forced the officials to declare almost all the local area, off-limits to Americans. A few weeks later, a small area known as "The Fish" was opened and declared secure by both the Air Force Security Police and the Philippine Army Police.
In December, the "fish" was still the only part of Angeles City most Americans could go...and outside of visiting strip bars filled with Filipina bar gals, there wasn't much to do in the "Fish."
The hotdog stand I was in, was right near the main gate to the base, on the other side of Field Avenue from the gate. It was recessed into the front of a building with the front wall completely open to the street. After we got our food, we went to back of the building and I sat with my back to the back wall where I could keep a close eye on the happenings in the street in front of me. I watched as American GIs walked by with their girlfriends, and Philippine military troops walked by. Then I watched three Philippino men walk by in leather coats.
I thought this was strange since even though it was 6:30 pm, the temperature was still about 80. But the three glanced inside the building and continued walking. A few minutes later, they came back. The first person walked across the street and stopped under a tree and leaned up against it. The other two stopped on either side of the building and leaned up against the wall. As I continued to talk to my girlfriend, I was watching the three out of the corner of my eye. I could tell the person across the street had a weapon under his jacket...the bulge wasn't obvious, but it was detectable. And I thought I could see bulges under the coats of the other two, but wasn't sure. So then my mind started going down the options list.
After watching dozens of GIs walk by the threesome and the three not even batting an eye their way, including very drunk airmen who would have been easy pickings for thieves, I decide they weren't criminals waiting for score. They had to have an agenda and most likely, I was that agenda. By an odd coincidence, I resembled my boss who was constantly on television announcing closures, openings and things of interest to all Americans at Clark AB. We knew from intelligence briefings, that my boss was on the hit list for the NPA. I could only assume the three surly looking Philippino guys waiting outside the hotdog stand, were in fact, NPA Sparrows (the name the group gave to their assassins) and they were waiting for me, thinking I was my boss, or they knew I worked in the same office and decided I was a target of opportunity. Either way, I knew I was in trouble if I left the building. And, as long as I was inside, they were content to wait. Again, I began forming a plan. When I finalized the idea, I told my girlfriend, as she was very important to it.
The plan was simple. I would go to the counter and get two more cokes. After sitting down, I would reach for my cigarettes (I was a smoker then) and crumple up the pack (there were several left in it) and ask her to go get me a pack of Camel Lights. I knew the cigarette stand next to where one of the thugs was waiting didn't have that brand and told my girlfriend to ask for them and when told they didn't have that brand, to ask where she could get them. She would then ask if Checkpoint would have them because everyone knew Checkpoint was the largest of all the street vendors. I explained to her when she got to Checkpoint, she was to go to the Philippine police and tell them about the three guys waiting outside the hotdog stand.
Then it was time to implement the plan. I got our drinks, tossed my not-really-empty-pack of cigarettes into a nearby trash can and asked my gal to go get me a pack. She did, and followed the plan. I drank my drink and waited and watched. The three looked at each other and a few moments later, I watched as the one near the tree snapped his head to his right, then say something and all three began running off down the street. A moment later, six Philippine Army troopers ran by in the same direction and behind them, my girlfriend with a big smile on her face. When she came over to me, I hugged her and said, "Let's get out of here." We walked over to the bus stop on base and waited for the bus. While we waited, I heard a series of gun shot off in the distance.
The next morning, I heard several possible NPA members had been shot and one or two wounded were captured. I smiled knowing I probably assisted in their demise.
Memories of those incidents came back to me as I sat and watched the events of 9/11. And as I watched, an intense hatred of terrorist grew in me.
That hatred is still there. To this day, I wish I was helping fight this global terror war the United States is involved in. But I can't. So my hatred grows. It will remain with me to the day I die. And so will the depression I feel everyday knowing I can't help my fellow fighting Americans fight that war.
I'm sure everyone knows where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. I was asleep at the time. On the west coast, it was a little past 8 am and my phone rang. I woke, but as I was pulling myself out of bed, the ringing stopped, so back to the pillow I went. But a moment later, the phone rang again. Still half asleep, I went into the living room and picked up the phone.
"Hello."
"They took out the twin towers."
"Who? Bin Laden?"
"Turn on your TV."
That was extent of the conversation with a friend of mine. After the 1993 bombings, I had expected that group of scumbags to go after the towers again. Bin Laden was logical mastermind for me...even half asleep. I was called moments before the first tower collapsed...and watched the panic which ensued after it and the second tower went down. I spent the rest of the morning like everyone else...watching the news.
As I watched, I thought back to my days in the US Air Force...to the days terrorists went after me. Yes...I was a terrorist target.
The first time it happened was in Italy in 1977. The Brigate Rosse, or Red Brigade was terrorizing the people of northern Italy. I was then stationed at Aviano AB, in the northeast portion of Italy, near the Red Brigade area of operations. They worked out of Milan, Italy. Their tactics were not to kill, but to maim. They would shoot their targets in the knee, known as "knee-capping," which would in effect cripple the person. Their targets initially, were journalists who wrote negative articles about them. Later on, they changed their modus operandi and got into kidnapping and murder. But that isn't what this story is about.
One day, I was called to the office of the Carabinieri, the Italian State Police. When I arrived, our Security Police commander, base commander and few other people who I don't recall were present. I was told the Red Brigade had issued a threat to "knee-cap" an American journalist. Since my job at the time was that of editor of The Vigileer, the base newspaper for Aviano AB, there was the possibility I could be targeted. There were more American military journalists at an Army post near Vicenza, Italy and I am sure they were told the same thing I was.
I was told since Aviano was an open base, it would be a lot easier for the Red Brigade to get to me. The Carabinieri informed me what to watch for, and what to do if I saw anything suspicious. Then they told me to limit my trips off base. Well, that was almost impossible for me, since my newspaper was put together and printed in Pordenone, Italy, about 10 miles away and I had to be at the printing plant the two days prior to publishing the paper. I told them that, and told them I would keep an close eye on my surroundings and then asked if there was anything else because I had work to do. They mentioned things to watch for again and I went back to my office.
For the next three weeks, whenever I saw a car with plates from Milan, Italy in my rear view mirror, or parked near where I was going, I changed my plans. I would perform a scouting mission before I parked my car looking for Milan plated vehicles. Sometimes I would see a nearby Carabinieri vehicle parked near where I was, sometimes I wouldn't. I would think that they were watching me and they probably were. I didn't mind...I liked my knees.
Then, on a bright, sunny Saturday morning, a rail car on a supply train heading towards Aviano AB from the station in Pordenone, blew up. A couple of hours after the explosion, the Red Brigade claimed responsibility. In their communique, they said that rather than "knee-capping" someone who would be replaced, they wanted to hurt the Americans where it hurt most...by blowing up some of our needed supplies. So they planted a bomb on a rail car they knew was headed towards Aviano, set the timer and waited. Had the bomb gone off at the supply depot on base, it might have been a different story. But bomb went off before the car arrived on base. The damage it did, didn't hurt the base at all. The car they picked contained nothing but office supplies, something which was held back from news reports.
It hit home to me when I heard about the train incident, that I could easily have been the target instead. I became a lot more aware of my surroundings after that. I also noticed that I didn't see Carabinieri cars as often after that. I figure the Italian police had a lot to do with the change in tactics. It's possible that every time the Red Brigade looked for me, they also found nearby Carabinieri keeping an eye on me. That forced their hand and they changed tactics.
Flash forward to 1989. I was now on a temporary assignment to an Army unit at Soto Cano AB, Honduras. I was the Noncommissioned Officer in Charge of the Public Affairs office. The position had to be an Air Force member, since USAF aircraft flew in and out of the base on a regular basis. If there was an incident, an Air Force person in Public Affairs would be needed to handle the press queries.
Honduras at that time, was having a problem with the Morazanist Front for the Liberation of Honduras or FMLH. They had already made several attacks on the American military stationed in the country, and wanted nothing more than to cause more damage.
One morning, there was a bad auto accident right outside the gates to the base. American medical personnel responded and saved a number of lives. This was a good thing and we wanted to spread the word that we did good things for the country. So after a news release on the incident was translated into Spanish, my boss and I went into Comeyagua, the nearby town, to deliver the release to a number of the news outlets. The third drop point was a radio station near the center of town. When we arrived, my boss, an Army major, said he would be right out. So, I put the vehicle in neutral and waited. Standard operating procedure was to leave someone in the vehicle with the engine running and I was following that directive.
Five minutes passed and the major was still inside. At about ten minutes, I began to wonder what was going on. While I was trying to figure out the scenario, an Honduran walked up to the driver's side of the truck I was in and asked in a very unfriendly tone, if I needed help. I replied I didn't and that I was waiting for someone. The person then walked away from the truck towards the rear and I watched him go into a building about 100 feet away. Moments later, a different person came out of the doorway, paused a moment while he looked at me and took off down the street away from me. I made note of him and continued my vigil around the truck, making plans on what I would do should trouble break out before the major returned.
Less than five minutes later, I observed a pea-soup green Chevy Impala, probably early '70s, I don't remember now, pull up in front of the door and stop. Both front doors opened and the man who a short time earlier ran off in the direction the car came from, stepped out and went inside the building. The driver turned, faced my direction and stretched, then opened the back driver's side door and leaned in to do something. As he did that, the man who left the car moments earlier, along with the man who came to my truck earlier and third man came out of the building. One opened the rear passenger side door, while the other two climbed in the front and leaned over the seat to do something in the back seat area.
I now had a plan for a possible contingency and watched the quartet closely in my rear view mirror. As I watched, my stomach suddenly tightened. I saw the business end of an AK-47 pop up over the top of the front seat. Then it hit me what was going on. They were preparing their weapons they were going to use to attack me. A chill ran up and down my spine, my hands rubbed the cool, blue steel of the only protection I had, and I step on the clutch and slowly put the transmission into first gear. I had decided the moment I saw the first weapon come out, I would give the horn two quick blasts as I sped around a corner 20 feet in front of me. I would make the first left I saw then turn right at each of the first four right turns I came upon. I would then stop and wait. After a short time, if I didn't see the bad guys, I would return to the area of the square, hopefully pick up my boss and get the hell out of there.
Well, I didn't have to use my plan. Right around the time the group had finished what they were doing, and during what I assumed was the leader giving them the game plan for the attack, something happened that I will never forget. A bell rang and from a building on the other side of the street, behind the Chevy, a bunch of young, school aged Honduran children came running out, into the square.
The four guys behind me all jumped out to the street, straightened up and began looking around. Then they started arguing with each other until the original driver said something and the three others got in the car. The driver remained outside the car, staring at me and our eyes locked in the mirror. He stared for a few moments, then with his hand formed in the fashion of a pistol, he pointed it at me and pretended to shoot me. He pretended to blow the smoke out of the barrel, then got in the car and backed down the street a way, turned around and headed out of sight.
I was happy to see those kids. As a few of them walked past my truck on their way home, I reached into my pocket, grabbed all the money I had (Honduran limpiras, both paper and coin) and tossed it into the street and said, Gracias los niños! The children of course, picked it up, a couple tried to return it to me, but I waved it off and the kids for the most part hung nearby until my boss came out. He got in the truck, apologized for being so long and asked what was going on. I told him on the way to our last stop, which he wanted to skip. We then headed back to the safety of the base, where I was debriefed by intelligence.
My third confrontation with terrorists occurred in The Philippines a year and a half later. It was December 1990, and I had just picked up my Filipina girlfriend. We decided to get something to eat at a hotdog near her apartment before we headed out to do whatever it was we had planned to do. There wasn't a lot we could do, and few places we could go. Several months earlier, the New Peoples Army, or NPA, a group of murdering thugs, had walked up to two airmen just outside a hotel near the base and put a .45 round into the back of their heads. The assassinations forced the officials to declare almost all the local area, off-limits to Americans. A few weeks later, a small area known as "The Fish" was opened and declared secure by both the Air Force Security Police and the Philippine Army Police.
In December, the "fish" was still the only part of Angeles City most Americans could go...and outside of visiting strip bars filled with Filipina bar gals, there wasn't much to do in the "Fish."
The hotdog stand I was in, was right near the main gate to the base, on the other side of Field Avenue from the gate. It was recessed into the front of a building with the front wall completely open to the street. After we got our food, we went to back of the building and I sat with my back to the back wall where I could keep a close eye on the happenings in the street in front of me. I watched as American GIs walked by with their girlfriends, and Philippine military troops walked by. Then I watched three Philippino men walk by in leather coats.
I thought this was strange since even though it was 6:30 pm, the temperature was still about 80. But the three glanced inside the building and continued walking. A few minutes later, they came back. The first person walked across the street and stopped under a tree and leaned up against it. The other two stopped on either side of the building and leaned up against the wall. As I continued to talk to my girlfriend, I was watching the three out of the corner of my eye. I could tell the person across the street had a weapon under his jacket...the bulge wasn't obvious, but it was detectable. And I thought I could see bulges under the coats of the other two, but wasn't sure. So then my mind started going down the options list.
After watching dozens of GIs walk by the threesome and the three not even batting an eye their way, including very drunk airmen who would have been easy pickings for thieves, I decide they weren't criminals waiting for score. They had to have an agenda and most likely, I was that agenda. By an odd coincidence, I resembled my boss who was constantly on television announcing closures, openings and things of interest to all Americans at Clark AB. We knew from intelligence briefings, that my boss was on the hit list for the NPA. I could only assume the three surly looking Philippino guys waiting outside the hotdog stand, were in fact, NPA Sparrows (the name the group gave to their assassins) and they were waiting for me, thinking I was my boss, or they knew I worked in the same office and decided I was a target of opportunity. Either way, I knew I was in trouble if I left the building. And, as long as I was inside, they were content to wait. Again, I began forming a plan. When I finalized the idea, I told my girlfriend, as she was very important to it.
The plan was simple. I would go to the counter and get two more cokes. After sitting down, I would reach for my cigarettes (I was a smoker then) and crumple up the pack (there were several left in it) and ask her to go get me a pack of Camel Lights. I knew the cigarette stand next to where one of the thugs was waiting didn't have that brand and told my girlfriend to ask for them and when told they didn't have that brand, to ask where she could get them. She would then ask if Checkpoint would have them because everyone knew Checkpoint was the largest of all the street vendors. I explained to her when she got to Checkpoint, she was to go to the Philippine police and tell them about the three guys waiting outside the hotdog stand.
Then it was time to implement the plan. I got our drinks, tossed my not-really-empty-pack of cigarettes into a nearby trash can and asked my gal to go get me a pack. She did, and followed the plan. I drank my drink and waited and watched. The three looked at each other and a few moments later, I watched as the one near the tree snapped his head to his right, then say something and all three began running off down the street. A moment later, six Philippine Army troopers ran by in the same direction and behind them, my girlfriend with a big smile on her face. When she came over to me, I hugged her and said, "Let's get out of here." We walked over to the bus stop on base and waited for the bus. While we waited, I heard a series of gun shot off in the distance.
The next morning, I heard several possible NPA members had been shot and one or two wounded were captured. I smiled knowing I probably assisted in their demise.
Memories of those incidents came back to me as I sat and watched the events of 9/11. And as I watched, an intense hatred of terrorist grew in me.
That hatred is still there. To this day, I wish I was helping fight this global terror war the United States is involved in. But I can't. So my hatred grows. It will remain with me to the day I die. And so will the depression I feel everyday knowing I can't help my fellow fighting Americans fight that war.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Not Cheesy Hollywood, But Real Life Disasters
I just finished watching one of those cheesy Hollywood disaster flicks. This one was Atomic Twister. It was an interesting twist on a tried and true disaster...the tornado.
The plot was a tornado hitting a nuclear power station, not once, but twice, causing a condition which could lead to a meltdown. Of course there were subplots all over the place and everything came out on the good side at the end. Sharon Lawrence was about the only redeeming grace in the flick. She's still a hottie.
I always watch these types of movie with a bit of humor mixed with a bit of reality. You see, I went through my own Hollywood-style disaster, but it wasn't a movie.
If all you ever do is read my blog entries, you've learned a lot about the reality of my life. Sixteen years ago, I was closing out my military career, preparing to retire. I was working at what was considered one of the best assignments in the Air Force, Clark AB, The Philippines. Not long after I arrived there, the paradise it was died and a number of ugly monsters took over.
First, there was the assassination of two airmen just outside of the base by a group of lawless thugs who called themselves the NPA (New People's Army). After that happened, travel restrictions were put in place which made exploring the P.I. next to impossible. A couple of months after the shootings, a 7.8 earthquake rumbled through the area, killing quite a few, while destroying more buildings north of us than in our area. It also scared a lot of people on the base.
It hit somewhere around 4:30 pm in mid July, 1990. I had worked some overtime in the office and had gone out to the bus stop to wait for the shuttle bus to my barracks. I was talking to two Filipina women when I felt the primary wave of the quake and before I could say "Earthquake," everything was rocking and rolling. It was strong enough to knock me on my ass. I sat there on the pavement, bouncing up and down and watched pressure waves move through the building across the street. It was a cinder block building and I could actually see the waves moving the blocks up and down as the wave passed by.
I remembered seeing that same thing happen in Italy. I hadn't been at Aviano AB in the northeastern Italy more than a month or two, when an earthquake hit. It rumbled in at about 6.0 on the Richter Scale just as I was reaching for my cup of coffee. Several months earlier, the area was rocked with a series of much stronger quakes which destroyed many buildings in the area. People were a little gun shy by the time I got there.
When this quake hit, I watched my coffee cup dance across the desktop and when it clicked what was happening, I stood up. Right in front of me, about 10 feet away was a cinder block wall, part of the overall cinder block construction of the building I worked in which held my office. I was amazed then to see the cinder blocks actually bending with the seismic waves as they moved through the building. I stood there enthralled with what I was seeing until it ended, then casuallyv walked out of the building...the last person to leave it.
Well, I was watching the same thing in the Philippines and it still amazed me how it could happen and the blocks not crumble to dust. The shaking of the quake in the P.I. lasted a good minute or so. When it was finished, I stood up, dusted myself off, excused myself from the frightened women I had been talking to, and hurried back to my office. I knew I would be needed and I was. I didn't get home that night until around 3 am and was assigned as command post night shift coordinator for my office.
Things regarding the earthquake calmed down about two weeks later, and life in the P.I. appeared like it would soon get back to normal. However, because of a continuing threat from the thugs, the area of Angeles City Americans were allowed to visit was drastically reduced. Not much was available outside of strip bars and honky-tonks of various repute. But then, several months after the quakes, that area was again placed on the restricted list, as a strike by the local national employees at Clark, locked down the base. We weren't allowed off-base unless we lived off-base and no local national was allowed on base. This lasted a week or so before it was settle and things got back to a strange normal.
Christmas and the new year arrived with a bit of relaxation in restrictions most people assigned to Clark had been living with for six months. It was a welcome change. There was an incident regarding me and several "thugs," which I will most likely relate some other time, but otherwise, the holidays were quiet.
Then on April 2, 1991 (April Fools Day still for the U.S.), I walked outside the barracks to get on my bicycle and go to work. As I unlocked my bike from the rack, I looked up and towards the mountains west of the base. We were several weeks into the dry season at the time and I was curious about a plume of pure white smoke rising from near the peak of one of the mountains. I pulled out my camera and took several photos, got on my bike and went to work.
The next day, word came down that the smoke I saw the day before wasn't smoke at all, but steam. It came from a volcano, which for whatever reason, decided to activate. This volcano was between five and ten miles from the base, depending on where you were on base. But hearing that didn't surprise me, nor another office worker.
Several months after the earthquake, I began feeling some strange vibrations. These vibrations were coming from right underneath my feet and they were definitely confusing me. I would feel them for hours straight, then they would stop for a while, and again continue. One afternoon, we were in a staff meeting when the vibrations began again. I backed away from the table and looked down at the floor, then around the room and finally at the rest of the people in the room. No one seemed to be feeling what I was feeling, but there was one person who was looking at me curiously.
After the meeting that person came over to me and asked me if I felt anything. I told her and she said she has been feeling the same thing. We both knew what it was...it was magma moving below us. The two of us were sensitive enough to feel the slight vibrations of the movement. When we mentioned it to others, they thought we were nuts and it was forgotten, but not by the two of us.
The day it was verified that Mt. Pinatubo was now an active volcano, Marge and I talked. We both thought the most likely candidate for activation would have been Mt. Arayat, an extinct volcano east of the base. But Pinatubo was good also. No one really knew anything about the mountain, so the Philippines Geological Survey folks called the US Geological Survey folks and two organizations set up a headquarters on Clark to watch the mountain.
Flash forward a couple of months to mid June. Clark AB had been evacuated, the mountain had erupted several times, and I was one 1,200 people who stayed behind to protect U.S. property and interests on base. On the day of the first eruption of the mountain, a throat-clearing blow as it was labeled by the volcanologists, a typhoon began that had developed in the Pacific began moving our way. Weather folks on base began keeping an eye on it and it wasn't long before it turned into a super typhoon. It also started making a beeline for the base.
Well, now we had a typhoon to watch, along with the mountain. Forecasts had the typhoon hitting the base mid morning sometime on June 15, 1991. Plans were made for its approach, factoring in the volcano, and in the early morning hours of the predicted date of the typhoon hitting the base, the mountain decided it had had enough waiting time. It blew just as the typhoon hit. Not only was Clark being pummeled by winds from a typhoon and ash from an erupting volcano, but the volcano's eruption was causing an earthquake. It wasn't a powerful quake, but strong enough to be felt on Clark. And it lasted hours.
In the interim, the lucky 1,200 had evacuated to the base of Mt. Arayat to wait out the eruption and the typhoon. While there, quakes constantly rumbled through the area, some strong ones, and one really strong one. Rain was coming down, mixed with volcanic ash, giving the term "raining mud" a whole new meaning. After the typhoon had run its course, and the quakes on Clark had subsided a bit, and the volume of ash being released by the mountain lowered, a new world emerged. A world of gray and of trees stripped of all leaves and a gray sky clouded with suspended volcanic ash. Towards the mountain, a wall of blackness hung and moved northward and eastward covering the closest parts of the base to it, with a wall darkness, dubbed "The Dark Side of the Moon."
These conditions lasted until the raining season began which brought lahars (flash floods of ash and debri moving down the mountain along the rivers surrounding the base). During one particular nondescript rainfall, I had dropped some people off at the main gate to the base and was heading back to my office, when as I rounded a curve, a wall of water mixed with mud and stones roared across the roadway. It took me by surprise and splashed around enough to kill the engine of the van I was driving. I attempted to restart the engine and failed. Each attempted failed and all the while, the water was pushing the van towards the curve. On the other side of the curve was a large drainage ditch about 12 feet deep. I knew if I didn't get the engine started, the water would sooner or later dump the vehicle over the edge, with me in it.
So I continued trying to start the engine. It finally caught and I continued on my way. Later, I went by the same spot I was almost stranded at and saw that some of the curbing had washed away. Whether it happened while was stuck there or not, I don't know, but it had me wondering.
Living with a volcano next door isn't fun. But it can be exciting. That was about the last strange thing that happened to me personally, but not the last to happen to the base. Lahars and mudflows had knocked down all the bridges surrounding the base, isolating our area by road. The "big water" as the Philippinos called the flows, had also eroded away the banks of the rivers and many houses and buildings, including one hospital, had fallen to the erosion. Most of the erosion was happening on the opposite side of the rivers from the base, but one day that changed.
Word came down that areas under million gallon storage tanks of fuel was causing a concern. It was possible the erosion could undermine the foundation of the tanks and cause them to tumble over, ripping open, adding an even more to the catastrophe. Luck was with us and it didn't happened, at least not while I was there. In the end, the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo caused more than just disaster to the P.I. It lowered global temperatures, destroyed crops and lands for years as ash washed down during the rainy season.
But it was a disaster like no other. It turned me into a refugee, something I never thought would happen, and gave a lot of people a new respect for Mother Nature.
I had always had that respect...you see, this was my second volcanic disaster. As for Hollywood disaster movies...well, they still bring a smile to my face. Living through a real one only they could dream up, makes life a sweeter.
The plot was a tornado hitting a nuclear power station, not once, but twice, causing a condition which could lead to a meltdown. Of course there were subplots all over the place and everything came out on the good side at the end. Sharon Lawrence was about the only redeeming grace in the flick. She's still a hottie.
I always watch these types of movie with a bit of humor mixed with a bit of reality. You see, I went through my own Hollywood-style disaster, but it wasn't a movie.
If all you ever do is read my blog entries, you've learned a lot about the reality of my life. Sixteen years ago, I was closing out my military career, preparing to retire. I was working at what was considered one of the best assignments in the Air Force, Clark AB, The Philippines. Not long after I arrived there, the paradise it was died and a number of ugly monsters took over.
First, there was the assassination of two airmen just outside of the base by a group of lawless thugs who called themselves the NPA (New People's Army). After that happened, travel restrictions were put in place which made exploring the P.I. next to impossible. A couple of months after the shootings, a 7.8 earthquake rumbled through the area, killing quite a few, while destroying more buildings north of us than in our area. It also scared a lot of people on the base.
It hit somewhere around 4:30 pm in mid July, 1990. I had worked some overtime in the office and had gone out to the bus stop to wait for the shuttle bus to my barracks. I was talking to two Filipina women when I felt the primary wave of the quake and before I could say "Earthquake," everything was rocking and rolling. It was strong enough to knock me on my ass. I sat there on the pavement, bouncing up and down and watched pressure waves move through the building across the street. It was a cinder block building and I could actually see the waves moving the blocks up and down as the wave passed by.
I remembered seeing that same thing happen in Italy. I hadn't been at Aviano AB in the northeastern Italy more than a month or two, when an earthquake hit. It rumbled in at about 6.0 on the Richter Scale just as I was reaching for my cup of coffee. Several months earlier, the area was rocked with a series of much stronger quakes which destroyed many buildings in the area. People were a little gun shy by the time I got there.
When this quake hit, I watched my coffee cup dance across the desktop and when it clicked what was happening, I stood up. Right in front of me, about 10 feet away was a cinder block wall, part of the overall cinder block construction of the building I worked in which held my office. I was amazed then to see the cinder blocks actually bending with the seismic waves as they moved through the building. I stood there enthralled with what I was seeing until it ended, then casuallyv walked out of the building...the last person to leave it.
Well, I was watching the same thing in the Philippines and it still amazed me how it could happen and the blocks not crumble to dust. The shaking of the quake in the P.I. lasted a good minute or so. When it was finished, I stood up, dusted myself off, excused myself from the frightened women I had been talking to, and hurried back to my office. I knew I would be needed and I was. I didn't get home that night until around 3 am and was assigned as command post night shift coordinator for my office.
Things regarding the earthquake calmed down about two weeks later, and life in the P.I. appeared like it would soon get back to normal. However, because of a continuing threat from the thugs, the area of Angeles City Americans were allowed to visit was drastically reduced. Not much was available outside of strip bars and honky-tonks of various repute. But then, several months after the quakes, that area was again placed on the restricted list, as a strike by the local national employees at Clark, locked down the base. We weren't allowed off-base unless we lived off-base and no local national was allowed on base. This lasted a week or so before it was settle and things got back to a strange normal.
Christmas and the new year arrived with a bit of relaxation in restrictions most people assigned to Clark had been living with for six months. It was a welcome change. There was an incident regarding me and several "thugs," which I will most likely relate some other time, but otherwise, the holidays were quiet.
Then on April 2, 1991 (April Fools Day still for the U.S.), I walked outside the barracks to get on my bicycle and go to work. As I unlocked my bike from the rack, I looked up and towards the mountains west of the base. We were several weeks into the dry season at the time and I was curious about a plume of pure white smoke rising from near the peak of one of the mountains. I pulled out my camera and took several photos, got on my bike and went to work.
The next day, word came down that the smoke I saw the day before wasn't smoke at all, but steam. It came from a volcano, which for whatever reason, decided to activate. This volcano was between five and ten miles from the base, depending on where you were on base. But hearing that didn't surprise me, nor another office worker.
Several months after the earthquake, I began feeling some strange vibrations. These vibrations were coming from right underneath my feet and they were definitely confusing me. I would feel them for hours straight, then they would stop for a while, and again continue. One afternoon, we were in a staff meeting when the vibrations began again. I backed away from the table and looked down at the floor, then around the room and finally at the rest of the people in the room. No one seemed to be feeling what I was feeling, but there was one person who was looking at me curiously.
After the meeting that person came over to me and asked me if I felt anything. I told her and she said she has been feeling the same thing. We both knew what it was...it was magma moving below us. The two of us were sensitive enough to feel the slight vibrations of the movement. When we mentioned it to others, they thought we were nuts and it was forgotten, but not by the two of us.
The day it was verified that Mt. Pinatubo was now an active volcano, Marge and I talked. We both thought the most likely candidate for activation would have been Mt. Arayat, an extinct volcano east of the base. But Pinatubo was good also. No one really knew anything about the mountain, so the Philippines Geological Survey folks called the US Geological Survey folks and two organizations set up a headquarters on Clark to watch the mountain.
Flash forward a couple of months to mid June. Clark AB had been evacuated, the mountain had erupted several times, and I was one 1,200 people who stayed behind to protect U.S. property and interests on base. On the day of the first eruption of the mountain, a throat-clearing blow as it was labeled by the volcanologists, a typhoon began that had developed in the Pacific began moving our way. Weather folks on base began keeping an eye on it and it wasn't long before it turned into a super typhoon. It also started making a beeline for the base.
Well, now we had a typhoon to watch, along with the mountain. Forecasts had the typhoon hitting the base mid morning sometime on June 15, 1991. Plans were made for its approach, factoring in the volcano, and in the early morning hours of the predicted date of the typhoon hitting the base, the mountain decided it had had enough waiting time. It blew just as the typhoon hit. Not only was Clark being pummeled by winds from a typhoon and ash from an erupting volcano, but the volcano's eruption was causing an earthquake. It wasn't a powerful quake, but strong enough to be felt on Clark. And it lasted hours.
In the interim, the lucky 1,200 had evacuated to the base of Mt. Arayat to wait out the eruption and the typhoon. While there, quakes constantly rumbled through the area, some strong ones, and one really strong one. Rain was coming down, mixed with volcanic ash, giving the term "raining mud" a whole new meaning. After the typhoon had run its course, and the quakes on Clark had subsided a bit, and the volume of ash being released by the mountain lowered, a new world emerged. A world of gray and of trees stripped of all leaves and a gray sky clouded with suspended volcanic ash. Towards the mountain, a wall of blackness hung and moved northward and eastward covering the closest parts of the base to it, with a wall darkness, dubbed "The Dark Side of the Moon."
These conditions lasted until the raining season began which brought lahars (flash floods of ash and debri moving down the mountain along the rivers surrounding the base). During one particular nondescript rainfall, I had dropped some people off at the main gate to the base and was heading back to my office, when as I rounded a curve, a wall of water mixed with mud and stones roared across the roadway. It took me by surprise and splashed around enough to kill the engine of the van I was driving. I attempted to restart the engine and failed. Each attempted failed and all the while, the water was pushing the van towards the curve. On the other side of the curve was a large drainage ditch about 12 feet deep. I knew if I didn't get the engine started, the water would sooner or later dump the vehicle over the edge, with me in it.
So I continued trying to start the engine. It finally caught and I continued on my way. Later, I went by the same spot I was almost stranded at and saw that some of the curbing had washed away. Whether it happened while was stuck there or not, I don't know, but it had me wondering.
Living with a volcano next door isn't fun. But it can be exciting. That was about the last strange thing that happened to me personally, but not the last to happen to the base. Lahars and mudflows had knocked down all the bridges surrounding the base, isolating our area by road. The "big water" as the Philippinos called the flows, had also eroded away the banks of the rivers and many houses and buildings, including one hospital, had fallen to the erosion. Most of the erosion was happening on the opposite side of the rivers from the base, but one day that changed.
Word came down that areas under million gallon storage tanks of fuel was causing a concern. It was possible the erosion could undermine the foundation of the tanks and cause them to tumble over, ripping open, adding an even more to the catastrophe. Luck was with us and it didn't happened, at least not while I was there. In the end, the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo caused more than just disaster to the P.I. It lowered global temperatures, destroyed crops and lands for years as ash washed down during the rainy season.
But it was a disaster like no other. It turned me into a refugee, something I never thought would happen, and gave a lot of people a new respect for Mother Nature.
I had always had that respect...you see, this was my second volcanic disaster. As for Hollywood disaster movies...well, they still bring a smile to my face. Living through a real one only they could dream up, makes life a sweeter.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Behind The Wall
I added another album to my Flickr photostream and posted a few images to it.
The album is Berlin, October 1977. The photos in that album have deep meaning to me. It was that temporary assignment I went on that shaped the rest of my life. I was considering getting out of the Air Force at that time. I had six months left on my assignment to Aviano AB, Italy and six months left on my contracted service. But then Berlin came along.
The first day I was in then West Berlin for a newspaper editors conference. Myself and the group of Air Force journalists I was with wanted to go see The Wall. We contacted the person who put the conference together and he agreed to show us Checkpoint Charlie and The Wall.
When we arrived there, I spent a good 30 minutes on a platform looking into East Berlin. I watched the ongoing activity of repair to the wall and some of the traps designed to keep East Berliners inside "The Worker's Paradise." After a while, I left the stand and was walking near a small museum dedicated to those who had escaped or attempted to escape the confines of the east and made it to the west. As I stood in the middle of the street looking towards the Allied control point (the famous Checkpoint Charlie) in front of me and border crossing maze further in the distance, an elderly German man walked up to me.
With tears in his eyes, he grabbed my right hand with both of his, and in formal German, thanked me. I looked into his eyes and saw a person who was glad I was who I was and where I was. It was at that exact moment that I decided I would remain in the Air Force. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't leave the Air Force until "The Wall" came down.
Twelve years later, on Nov. 9, 1989, I watched with tears in my eyes, as Germans from both sides of the wall embraced and partied together. I watched the scenes on television all night long. I watched, because I knew my reason for doing what I was doing was no longer a valid reason.
Two years after that, I retired from the U.S. Air Force.
The album is Berlin, October 1977. The photos in that album have deep meaning to me. It was that temporary assignment I went on that shaped the rest of my life. I was considering getting out of the Air Force at that time. I had six months left on my assignment to Aviano AB, Italy and six months left on my contracted service. But then Berlin came along.
The first day I was in then West Berlin for a newspaper editors conference. Myself and the group of Air Force journalists I was with wanted to go see The Wall. We contacted the person who put the conference together and he agreed to show us Checkpoint Charlie and The Wall.
When we arrived there, I spent a good 30 minutes on a platform looking into East Berlin. I watched the ongoing activity of repair to the wall and some of the traps designed to keep East Berliners inside "The Worker's Paradise." After a while, I left the stand and was walking near a small museum dedicated to those who had escaped or attempted to escape the confines of the east and made it to the west. As I stood in the middle of the street looking towards the Allied control point (the famous Checkpoint Charlie) in front of me and border crossing maze further in the distance, an elderly German man walked up to me.
With tears in his eyes, he grabbed my right hand with both of his, and in formal German, thanked me. I looked into his eyes and saw a person who was glad I was who I was and where I was. It was at that exact moment that I decided I would remain in the Air Force. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't leave the Air Force until "The Wall" came down.
Twelve years later, on Nov. 9, 1989, I watched with tears in my eyes, as Germans from both sides of the wall embraced and partied together. I watched the scenes on television all night long. I watched, because I knew my reason for doing what I was doing was no longer a valid reason.
Two years after that, I retired from the U.S. Air Force.
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