1754: A friar’s tale of volcano’s wrath
Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2020 16:19:27 +0000
BY JORGE MOJARRO
The sudden eruption of Taal Volcano last Sunday made me think of the several deadly eruptions it has had in history. Newspapers report that the last time Taal erupted was in 1977, when a little cone appeared in the main crater. However, a very destructive explosion occurred in 1911, when more than a thousand people died, devastated by flows of lava and burning ash.
Pictures from El Renacimiento, the most popular newspaper at that time, taken days after the calamitous event, show images of endless calcinated lands and total devastation.
But historians and geologists agree that the most destructive geological event in the Philippines was the continuous eruption of Taal Volcano during most of the year 1754. The seven-month eruption and the earthquakes it triggered were described by Saderra Masó, a Jesuit that specialized in the geological history of the archipelago, as “the most terrible in the history of the Islands.”
All the towns around Taal Lake, which at the time was known as Bombon Lake, were annihilated. Towns like Tanauan, Talisay, Lipa and Taal were subsequently rebuilt, but at a distance from the lake.
The earthquakes were felt throughout a large part of Luzon, on Mindoro Island, and even northern Panay.
Accounts of the 1754 eruption came from friars who survived the catastrophe. One of them was written by a Father Aguirre, an Agustinian. He composed a brief, hurried and dramatic narration of the destruction of the town of Taal, and the reader can feel at times the author struggling to find the right words to properly express the immensity of the disaster.
The initial explosion was followed by three months of intermittent, loud explosions and flows of very black smoke, until September 24, when a violent rain of stones and ash was accompanied by continuous tremors and enormous bangs. Aguirre said from the very beginning, there were “earthquakes with such a loud noise that we felt deaf and could barely hear what two people together were saying to each other.”
By that date, several houses in the town had colldapsed, including some properties of the mayor. The situation worsened from the end of September until November 1: “We suffered many tremors, he said, much thunder and lightning, an extraordinary buzz, and several rains of ashes, mud and sand, although it was not continuous because there were cease fires of an entire day, sometimes even of three or four days, but from November 1 until today everything has been horrendous,there is not a single hour without terrible thunder, lightning: artillery gunfire, with such loud noise, as if two armies were fighting.
The fire has gone up until it cannot be seen. Tremors of three days and nights, without any pause. Rains of stones, ashes and sand, withother brews from hell, that have caused several floods and killed many animals and some people.”
The devastation was such that Aguirre had to escape to the neighboring village of Casaysay. He was followed a few days later by the major and his acolyte. In Casaysay their situation did not improve that much. The accumulation of mud on the roofs was threatening the houses, the darkness was permanent, there was nothing to eat and drinking water was being transported from Bauan.
As if the situation was not desperate enough, a hurricane on December 2 demolished the few standing houses in Casaysay, forcing Aguirre and his companions out in the open. It is then, when the friar says he does not possess anything but the clothes he is wearing, that the narrative becomes personal and the narrator emphasizes the sincerity and truthfulness of his account.
Aguirre laments the loss of human lives and livestock, and describes himself as “blacker than a coalman,” because of the ash that covered him.
The old Tanauan town was literally buried and sunk in the lake, and only in the 80’s was Thomas Hargrove able to dive in the lake and find the town’s underwater remains, an experience he narrated in The Mysteries of Taal (1991).
If I am retelling shortly this old account, it is because, since the news of the eruption came up, I have spent several hours in social media and in the website of the Philippine Institue of Volcanology and Seismology, trying to observe the developments from the beginning.
And I must confess it reminded me of the beginnings of that long deadly eruption of 1754.
Hopefully, it should not be the same, and we all wish Taal becomes sleepy soon, but some caution should be exercised, because the capacity of destruction of Taal Volcano is, I believe — and according to the historical accounts consulted — something we cannot even imagine.
(The writer is a research fellow and associate professorial lecturer 3 for the Research Center for Culture, Arts and Humanities, Department of Literature, University of Santo Tomas)