In January 2020, the eruption of Taal Volcano marked the start of a year plagued with hardship and disaster. Volcanic Palette gives an account of the author’s experiences with the event, starting with the day of the eruption, the evacuation of his relatives to his home, towards his personal foray into a desolate, gray Taal.
THE FIRST TIME I HAD TO WEAR MASKS IN 2020 was not due to coronavirus–it was when the long-dormant volcano from my home province, Batangas, raised its sleeping maw and dyed the sky gray. I vividly recall stepping off from the jeepney to my dorm in UPLB and seeing this massive, billowing cloud in the afternoon skyline that I initially thought was a sign of an impending thunderstorm. Taal had apparently erupted, and I hastily scrolled through my phone to see that my relatives were in the process of evacuating and that they would be staying at our place for the time being.
Fine ash invaded the familiar streets and sidewalks of Los Baños a day later. Peeking through the gaps of doors and windows, painting the walls and cars a sooty, pale hue, the ash colored the everyday scenery a ghastly, grim shade of grey. Volcanic ash can enter the eyes, nostrils and lungs and wreak havoc, so people had to wear masks to mitigate the risks. Eventually, I ran out of them, and the stores did as well, so I covered my mouth and nose with a towel whenever I had to go outside. Once I had to shop for supplies, and that particular hot, sunny day, with the ash constantly getting dispersed into the air, made me feel like I was trekking through the middle of a perilous desert.
I boarded the journey back to Rosario three days later, bringing home a runny nose that was sneezing off all the ash from the trip. Our home was far enough from the volcano that when I arrived, the grass and houseplants were all green and ash-free. I looked on in amusement as I was greeted by an assortment of cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and what have you, all enjoying the cool afternoon outside. From small children running around, to smiling senior citizens leisurely passing the time, we had quite the gathering. They casually lounged in hammocks and chairs, talking to each other lightheartedly, as if one of the greatest natural disasters in recent times did not rain devastation upon their houses and lives.
There were about two dozen or so. Two families from my mother’s side, plus some of their neighbors and friends, all crowded together inside our house as they waited in bated breath for things to calm down. In fear of getting caught up in the rush of evacuees, they decided to evacuate the next day rather than immediately after the volcano erupted. With only a few garbage bags of clothes and necessities at hand, they fled Taal. One aunt shared to me her haunting experience with evacuating at around nine in the morning. Black ash, darker and more morose than the gray I knew, pounded heavily upon the roof of their car as they sped away from the onslaught of ash. Alongside them was a 10-wheeler, with children and elderly clinging to the sides like vines. She recalled tearing up as she saw the children’s heads getting showered by the black ash, the firetrucks’ constant ringing sirens only heightening the anxiety, the desperation. My grandmother, who evacuated at three in the morning, recounted the zero visibility fog that made the journey twice as difficult and hazardous. She said that she could never forget the tremors, which scared her more than the eruption itself. It shook up the ash from the roads, the roofs, the greenery, everything.
Each night, we laid down exercise mats on the living room for us to sleep on, and we huddled around like sardines in a can, chilled in the cold January air. During the day, our new residents would go off and find something to do, which was admittedly not much as we live in the probinsya. Some of them went off to explore the barangay, taking their motorcycles and younger cousins with them. The older folks spent the days fastidiously cleaning, gossiping, or monitoring the T.V. for any news regarding the situation. Cellular signal was weak, but there was Wi-Fi…sort of. When they asked where the Wi-Fi came from, we just sort of patted their backs and told them not to worry about it, surreptitiously peeking outside the window where our neighbors’ house stood. Two close cousins of mine even went out and started jogging and playing in the nearby basketball court out of sheer boredom, a feat I don’t think they have done in years. Compared to where we lived, most of our guests lived close to the action–the Taal Basilica, the Night Market, SM, restaurants; they had their fair share of attractions to go to when bored. And they had Wi-Fi, too.
It was an uneasy period where their lives were essentially in stasis–the schools, stores and offices where they go to have closed, and they had left behind their homes along with their precious belongings. I could feel their antsiness just by being near them as they idled around the house, like they were ready to just jump in their cars and drive back to Taal. And some of them did. Every day, the sound of tires would crunch on the pavement as someone departed or returned from somewhere. They said they went back to inspect their homes for damage or visit relatives, but I knew for a fact that the military was stationed near the disaster zones at the time to monitor the situation. My trust in the police and military were in the negatives, and each day I worried that one of them just might get on the wrong side of the cops and be arrested. My cousin’s husband documented the state of Taal daily through pictures taken by his aerial drone. From above, Taal and its surrounding municipalities looked like the surface of a picture frame that hasn’t been cleaned in years. Dusty, faded, and a shell of its former self.
At some point, we had some additional visitors. The barangay captain was notified that we were housing evacuees, and every so often people from LGUs and the private sector dropped by to deliver relief goods that quickly piled up. Sacks of rice, boxes of canned goods and noodles, and bottles of water, so much to the point that we couldn’t consume them all and had to give some away. In a way, my relatives were lucky that they could find somewhere they could be in rather than an evacuation center, which from what I heard were growing crowded and starting to lack supplies. As for me, seeing our usually quiet home filled with laughter and chatter filled me with a guilty sort of happiness, considering the circumstances. I rarely get to see us all bundled together in one place apart from birthdays and reunions.
A week after seeing that gigantic pillar of smoke in Elbi, I was invited by my uncle to join them on one of their trips to Taal. There was still a lot of stuff his family had left when they rushed towards Rosario, and he feared that thieves may come and take their belongings. I was hesitant; I still wasn’t sure at the time whether all these supposed trips were actually allowed by the government or not. From what I heard, there really was a lockdown but people can come and go for a limited amount of time; they cannot stay or sleep there. I was curious of what an ash-covered Taal looked like anyway, so I donned my mask and phone and hopped on their ride.
On my slippers. On my fingertips. On my phone. As I descended into the ghost town that is San Martin, Taal, all I could see was gray. We were greeted by the loud barks of my uncle’s dog, who sadly had to stay in his kennel due to his tremendous size. While he was busy going over his home, I sat down and watched the open T.V., surprised that there was still electricity in this barren wasteland. News was abuzz with people reluctant to leave their homes, or going back just to check their possessions, exactly what we were doing now. About two years ago, in 2018, Mayon Volcano erupted, destroying crops, displacing families, with farmers sneaking back to tend to their only source of income. Now, on the other side of Luzon Island, what I saw as reports on news broadcasts now flashed before my very own eyes.
My eyes widened when I saw a ragged young man exit the door with my uncle. Apparently, the caretaker of the neighboring property had been staying in my uncle’s house in secret, subsisting on rations as there really was no way of finding an open store for miles. I also learned that until today, electricity in the entirety of Taal had been shut off to prevent people from staying overnight. I shivered–I couldn’t imagine huddling for days in the dark in a disaster zone, not having any way of knowing what was happening. My uncle told me to go explore now as we would be leaving soon. Taking a deep breath, I walked out the gates and stepped onto the ashy pavement.
I was a specter roaming the remnants of a town long gone. Taal was never short of people walking its streets due to its historical significance, but now, save for a person or motorcycle materializing from the ash clouds, it was devoid of people. The floating ash created the illusion of fog in the distance, giving the town a haunted atmosphere. A dog with dirty grey fur stared at me as I passed. An abandoned car caked with ash looked twenty years more worn-down than it should. The trees lining the church bowed down limply, the ashfall weighing down their branches. The road leading to Taal Basilica, which was nearby, was embedded with footprints, tire tracks and the occasional paw print.
God had painted the land one singular color. Not even His House was spared–Taal Basilica, with scaffolding still attached in its grand facade, was covered in the strokes of His paintbrush, making it look more worn-down and ancient. The lack of churchgoers, tourists and vendors selling street food and toys somehow made the place even more desolate than it should be. With the way the dust moves, I’d have sworn that there were ghosts roaming around the empty parking lots, taking pictures of that historical building that stood the test of time. Last Christmas, just a month before the eruption, colorful, flashing lights were strewn around the lampposts, the decorative trees and the plaza. All that color and gaiety was now bleached into this monochrome scenery. I went down further towards the municipal hall and saw moving cars and vague figures. In fear of being seen by police, I decided to go back the other way, making sure that my phone took in all this bleakness, all the shades of one color that now formed much of my second home’s color palette.
A week after my little foray into Taal, my grandmother had to be confined in a nearby hospital for a cough that was triggered by the ash. Patient visitors were limited, so we took shifts on who would be looking after her, and I got mine the night before I was about to leave for Los Baños. I remember lying at one of those white steel beds in the middle of the night, with my grandmother at the adjacent one, and I thought about how the elderly were susceptible to these small, gray particles, so similar to dust and yet much more lethal than them, and I said, too soon, too soon. I didn’t want the ash to take over my Nanay, too, to dye her grey as it did to her hometown. Something about the trip, that transformation of a place I’ve known for so long into something foreign and eerie, made me all the more aware that the world can be changed in unfair, unforgiving ways.
Soon after, it was time to part ways, me to Laguna and them back home, some leaving behind to take care of a thankfully recovering Nanay. Work needed to be done–shoveling all the ash stuck on the roofs, sweeping the streets, wiping the windows back to their original sheen. It took about a month or two before I was able to return back to Taal, and from how pristine it was you wouldn’t believe that it had been akin to a wasteland a few weeks before. My Grade 7 and Grade 11 cousins, who were inquiring into the nearby schools back in Rosario, were relieved to return to their former classrooms and classmates, which would then be rudely interrupted by yet another microscopic threat that would arrive a month later.
When Taal exhibited signs of activity once more in 2021, my grandmother told me that they had the usual bags of necessities ready for whenever they had to evacuate again. Something about that statement unnerved me. Is this now our new reality? For my relatives to live in uneasiness of a temperamental volcano, ready to abandon everything at a moment’s notice just so they could live one more day? I was struck by my own powerlessness. As I and some of my relatives talked about their experiences more than a year later, more details that have escaped me before have come to light. About how the ash was so thick they could bury their feet beneath it. That after a tremor, they only had ten seconds of relief before the next one started again. That the nearby fault line had caused houses to be halved, roads and bridges to fracture and even the Basilica to develop cracks in its infrastructure. I still have pictures of a Taal that was not buzzing with the annual St. Martin procession full of fireworks and Hail Marys, or the crowd selling tapa and longganisa in the El Pasubat festival, or a Christmas chock-full of people there was not even space for the multicolored light to squeeze into. I do hope that the time I see that pallid, undead Taal would be in the far, far future, or preferably, not at all.
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