By Ashley Manabat / Correspondent
ANGELES CITY—The first-ever museum commemorating the eruption of Mount Pinatubo will be inaugurated on June 14 on the eve of the 25th anniversary of its cataclysmic eruption.
The Pinatubo Museum is housed at the Holy Angel University’s Center for Kapampangan Studies. It is open to the public.
Robert P. Tantingco, director of the center, made the announcement, which he posted on his Facebook account on Wednesday.
Tantingco said “the museum features a mural timeline of the history of Mount Pinatubo, a mural sculpture by Capampangan artist Arnel Garcia, and various exhibits executed by researcher-artist Joel Mallari.”
“The museum is our memorial to the 1991 event that profoundly altered the personal and collective destinies of Capampangans,” Tantingco said.
“What Capampangans experienced has no parallel in world history, except maybe the 10 plagues of Egypt in the Old Testament,” he noted.
“We had a volcanic eruption, earthquake, lahar, typhoon, rain of sand, ash and rocks, day turning into night—all at the same time! And the calamity went on for the next five years,” he said.
The opening of the museum will coincide with the launching of the book Our Common Fault: Stories of Loss and Survival in the July 16, 1990 Earthquake, authored by Lia T. Pangilinan and published by the Center for Kapampangan Studies, Tantingco said.
“Last year was the 25th anniversary of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that left a swath of destruction from Central Luzon all the way up to Northern Luzon,” Tantingco said. “The book is our memorial to all those who suffered or died in that earthquake,” he added.
“The earthquake led to a series of geological events that caused Pinatubo’s eruption one year later,” Tantingco said.