Karim Raslan

Ceritalah | Taal Volcano erupted but life goes on, highlighting the resilience of the Philippines

The island of Luzon ground to a halt almost immediately as flights were cancelled, the stock exchange suspended trading and businesses and schools closed

There is still danger but most of those displaced are desperate to return. They cannot afford to wait in shelters and there’s little the authorities can do to prevent them

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Lightning strikes as a column of ash surrounds the crater during the eruption. Photo: Handout

Karim Raslan

Published: 10:30am, 20 Jan 2020Updated: 11:41am, 20 Jan 2020

When Adriano O Mantiel, a 46-year-old maintenance worker in Rizal province near Manila, wiped ash from his mobile phone screen on January 12, 2020, he knew something was wrong.

“I thought that it was rain. But when it happened, my allergies immediately reacted,” he recalls. “I began sneezing. My eyes became very red and I had trouble breathing.”

He was reacting to the eruption of Taal Volcano 70km south of Manila in Batangas province – its first seismic activity in more than 40 years. Images of a huge plume of ash rising into the sky, accompanied by thunder and lightning, quickly spread across the world.

The Philippine island of Luzon, on which both Taal and Manila are located, ground to a halt almost immediately as flights were diverted or cancelled, the stock exchange suspended trading and businesses and schools closed. It was as if the 24 million residents of metropolitan Manila held their collective breath and fell silent, anticipating the worst.

The greatest fear was for those living closest to the volcano – perhaps the most intriguing in Southeast Asia’s “Ring of Fire” that extends from the Philippines in the north, through Sulawesi and Maluku to Java and Sumatra in the far west.

The diminutive Taal volcano is located on a small island in the middle of a picturesque caldera lake. The area around it is dotted with small towns such as Tagatay that have been transformed into a playground for rich Manilenos, some of whom “helicopter in” for lunch at plutocrat hang-out Antonio’s or stay at boutique hotel Sonya’s Garden.

Adriano O Mantiel with his wife and son. Photo: Ceritalah

But on January 12, everything changed. What followed was a mad scramble as authorities raced to evacuate the communities near the volcano. Within four days, some 82,000 people were displaced as losses in the millions mounted up for local businesses.