"The Fates Are Angry"

To the coastal residents of the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, the 30-ft. waves created by a giant underwater earthquake seemed like the wrath of heaven itself. "God in all his glory did not let this happen without reason," said one Mindanao official in an emotional appeal to the stricken population of Cotabato City (pop. 80,000), 500 miles south of Manila, to cooperate in rescue work. Observed a health officer: "We suffered the brunt of the Moslem insurgency in 1973, and we had the drought in 1972. Now this. Some of the people are saying the fates are angry at us."

The 20-sec. tremor, which measured 8 points on the Richter scale, came shortly after midnight last Monday. Centered in the Celebes Sea (see map), it sent the colossal tsunami waves toward the scenic shorelines of the Sulu Islands and the Moro Gulf coast while most residents were sleeping. The waves wiped out a dozen fishing villages, knocked out bridges, and caused buildings to collapse in the coastal cities of Cotabato, Pagadian and Davao. Philippine officials said the disaster was the worst in their country's history: 3,100 dead, another 3,700 missing, 1,000 injured and nearly 90,000 homeless.

Empty Arms. Gloria Bitancor, 35, who lost her five children, recalled that when the quake struck, "everybody was crying and shouting and warning of a tidal wave coming at us. I panicked and tried to gather all my five children into my arms. When the waves swept us out together with our house, I found that my arms were empty. I wanted to shout and curse my misery, but I had no more voice. It was then that I saw my little girl, her small fingers disappearing into the water, waving for help that never came."

In a crowded hospital in Cotabato, Cara Gausman, 22, is now recovering from a deep gash in her head. "I was asleep," she said. "Then everything hit my head--the water, the walls. About five minutes, maybe two minutes, I don't know, in the water, grabbing for wood, grabbing for anything. It was dark and under water. Afterward there were no more houses. Everything's gone. My brother's gone." Other survivors told of escaping the waves by running to the hillsides or clinging to coconut trees. One woman told of seeing her father swept out to sea, then swept back in again alive with the next wave.

The Philippine earthquake was the most destructive of three that struck Asia last week. The first, measuring 7.2, shook a sparsely populated area near the Great Snow Mountain in central China. It came just as residents of Peking were ending their three-week camp-out in the wake of the great quake that struck the Chinese capital and demolished the nearby industrial city of Tangshan last month. Two days later, a seismic jolt damaged more than a hundred homes on the Izu Peninsula 80 miles south of Tokyo. Scientists said the close sequence of quakes was probably coincidental, though they admit the rash of recent earthquakes in the Far East is disturbing and may suggest that some seismic process that is not yet fully understood may be taking place.

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