Abstract
This paper narrates a history of the August 2, 1968 Luzon earthquake that severely hit the capital city of Manila in the Philippines. The central site of this earthquake disaster was the collapse of a premiere, high-rise residential building in downtown Manila, the Ruby Tower Apartments. This tragedy reflects the projection of nationalism in terms of collective disaster response, and the Philippines’ complicated dealings with a specific segment of the population. The Ruby Tower tragedy was an emblematic representation of the country’s disaster response capacities and Filipino society’s perception and treatment of the Chinese and Filipino Chinese residents in Manila. Using newspapers, magazine articles, and scientific reports about the earthquake, this study aims to present a microhistory of a cultural minority in Manila, specifically on how the sordid story of earthquake disaster survival projects a poignant picture of ethnic dynamics and disaster politics in the country in the 1960s.
Disasters caused by natural hazards not only reveal the environmental vulnerabilities of a given geographic territory but also bring to light the social and cultural grammar of a community. In the Philippines, earthquakes, as a common natural hazard, are part of the country’s geographic and geological reality. They unearth a community’s weaknesses and susceptibilities and expose the adaptive capacities of people when environmental processes occur, in the context of various political, social, and cultural conditions.
All of Philippine life was there: the private employee, the government bureaucrat, the well-helped, the poor, the middle-class. Those who weren’t there, but who were united with Ruby rescuers through broadcast media, sent something of their own [from] heavy equipment to gasoline and candy, all the things that keep man and machine going, and those that dignify the dead.1
The case of the August 2 earthquake, which centers on the collapse of the Ruby Tower Apartments in downtown Manila, reflects the projection of nationalism in terms of collective disaster response, and the Philippines’ complicated dealings with a specific segment of the population. The Ruby Tower tragedy was an emblematic representation of the country’s disaster response capacities and Filipino society’s perception and treatment of the Chinese and Chinese Filipino residents in Manila. Using newspapers, magazine articles, and scientific reports about the earthquake, this study aims to present a microhistory of a cultural minority in Manila, specifically on how the sordid story of earthquake disaster survival projects a poignant picture of ethnic dynamics and disaster politics in the country in the 1960s.
The August 2 Earthquake
In the early morning of August 2, 1968, an earthquake of intensity vi on the Rossi—Forel scale hit the island of Luzon, affecting the capital city and some coastal towns in the province of Quezon.2 One post-disaster government report indicates that the earthquake took 322 human lives, 300 people were injured, and almost 30 buildings in Manila were severely damaged.3 A report of an ad hoc committee of the Geological Society of the Philippines described the earthquake as “the most powerful of a series to shock the country in at least two decades, [it] jarred Northern Luzon and battered some sectors of Manila.”4 The first major ground movement was felt at 4:21 a.m. and lasted for one minute; it was followed by an aftershock at 4:46 a.m.5 One broadsheet newspaper described the early-morning tremors as follows: “The first and more violent, rolled in like a steamroller, tumbling home appurtenances, knocking down old and new buildings alike, driving cracks on concrete edifices and roads and public constructions.”6 Initial reports published in newspapers reveal various earthquake intensities in different cities in Metro Manila and the provinces.7
Initial estimates placed the epicenter within a 200-kilometer radius of Manila (see Fig. 1).8 A foreign seismological entity, the Seismological Institute of Uppsala in Sweden, placed the earthquake at magnitude 7.5 on the Richter scale.9 But in the earthquake bulletin issued by the Philippine Weather Bureau (pwb), based on the data collected by the pwb Geophysical Observatory in Quezon City, from Legaspi in Albay, from the Cebu Weather Station, and from those gathered from field stations in 23 towns across 16 provinces, the earthquake varied between an intensity of iii and vii of the Rossi—Forel scale.10 The epicenter was identified as being located forty-five kilometers from Casiguran in Quezon province (now part of Aurora province), near a master fault at Singalan Bay.11 Similarly, Fathers Hames Hennessey and Sergio Su of the Manila Observatory (mo) estimated the epicenter to be forty-five kilometers east of Casiguran town.12 The nature of the earthquake was tectonic and was characterized as similar to the December 1949 earthquake that hit Luzon.13 Two days after the August 2 tremor, Manila felt two more earthquakes. Recorded in the seismographs of the mo, the Commission on Volcanology (Comvol) in Quezon City, and the pwb Ambulong Station at Taal Volcano, the earthquake was estimated to have originated 1,400 kilometers from the Philippines, probably in Formosa or Southern Japan.14
Epicenters and aftershocks of the August 2 earthquake
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: s. omote, y. osawa, i. skinner, and y. yoshimi, “luzon earthquake of 2 august 1968,” report no. 977 (paris: unesco, 1969), p. 83.
Epicenters and aftershocks of the August 2 earthquake
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: s. omote, y. osawa, i. skinner, and y. yoshimi, “luzon earthquake of 2 august 1968,” report no. 977 (paris: unesco, 1969), p. 83.Epicenters and aftershocks of the August 2 earthquake
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: s. omote, y. osawa, i. skinner, and y. yoshimi, “luzon earthquake of 2 august 1968,” report no. 977 (paris: unesco, 1969), p. 83.In the capital city, more than a dozen buildings, both public and private, were identified to have suffered massive damage after the early-morning earthquake of August 2, 1968. It was estimated that almost forty of Manila’s buildings were severely damaged, most of which were in the Intramuros, Escolta, and Manila Post Office areas.15 The most devastated was the collapsed Ruby Tower Apartments Building, a six-story commercial apartment located in the area of Doroteo Jose, Lope de Vega, and Teodora Alonzo streets in Santa Cruz district in Manila.16 The building, only three years old when the earthquake happened, had ninety-five apartments, nineteen on each floor, with the first floor for offices.17 The destruction of the Ruby Tower Building was described as “a layer of cake collapsing,” as top floors sunk down to the ground.18 Initial reports indicated that a considerable number of people, almost eighty families, ranging from eight hundred to one thousand individuals, most of whom were tenants, were trapped inside the collapsed building; around two hundred were identified to have died.19
Aside from the Ruby Tower Apartments, five more buildings stood to be demolished as the earthquake left them practically in rubble—the Great Eastern Hotel in Carriedo; the Philippine Bar Association building on Bonifacio Drive, Port Area; the Pan-American Building on Escolta Street; the Aloha Theater and Premier Hotel on Tetuan Street; and the former American Hospital building on Aduana Street in Intramuros.20 Other buildings had to be vacated, pending safety clearance from city authorities. Most of them were banking and insurance establishments in Escolta, Dasmarinas, and the rest of Binondo, and in Claro M. Recto Avenue (see Fig. 2, Table 1).21 A few buildings in Ermita district, like the Philam-Life and Magsaysay buildings were issued temporary closures because of certain vital damage.22 Several bridges in Manila were also damaged. The Nagtahan Bridge in Sta. Mesa district was temporarily closed as the southern lanes of it were found to have large cracks, and debris from buildings and fallen signboards blocked the other lane.23 Miraculously, the other six bridges along Pasig River did not have any damage.24 The Malacañang Palace, as well as some areas in Quezon City, Makati, and Pasay, suffered minor damage.25
Location of damaged buildings in Manila after the August 2 earthquake
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: omote et al., “luzon earthquake of 2 august 1968,” p. 91.
Location of damaged buildings in Manila after the August 2 earthquake
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: omote et al., “luzon earthquake of 2 august 1968,” p. 91.Location of damaged buildings in Manila after the August 2 earthquake
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: omote et al., “luzon earthquake of 2 august 1968,” p. 91.In a report made by a reconnaissance team from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (unesco) that visited the country in the weeks after the earthquake, it was estimated that the cost of the damage to public infrastructures and government-owned buildings and properties was equivalent to 4,519,000 Philippine pesos.26
Placing the Ruby Tower Tragedy in the Historiography of Chinese in the Philippines
The vast and extensive literature on the history of Chinese in the Philippines and the Chinese Filipino community provides a picture of an ethnolinguistic population that traversed various historical periods, faced political, social, and cultural upheavals, and asserted their agency and place in the country’s foundation story. In Philippine history and historiography, the Chinese have always been presented as an indispensable economic and complex cultural sector of society, particularly throughout the critical years of Spanish and American colonial rule.27 Since the early Spanish colonial period, the Chinese were the working population of the Philippine economy—in terms of a labor force, a source of investment, etc. Since then, they became part of the Philippine society not only as an essential pillar of the economy but also of the socio-cultural dynamics of the country. Despite this, they remained a sector of Philippine society that exclusively lived and developed on its own, particularly with regards to their sacred cultural and religious norms. Many scholarly works deal more critically with crucial cultural questions, such as ethnic representation in popular media, the issue of cultural integration, and local and global identity politics.28
Certain scholarly studies have amplified a critical stance on the Chinese as an ethnic minority population in the Philippines. The nationalism of the postwar years, and the larger global context of the Cold War period,29 particularly with regards to economic aspects, contributed to the collective animosity of Filipinos toward the Chinese, vocalized and projected by intellectual writings, particularly in the media. The politics of identity assertation, relations, and conflict have been studied through various social science lenses. Horsley discusses the historical formation of “anti-Chinese feeling” in the Philippines that paved the way for what she calls the “history of prejudice” in the country.30 In his studies on the Chinese in the Philippines, sociologist George Weightman surveys the development of the Chinese community in Manila as a cultural minority, contextualizing it in the social transformations of postwar Philippines, wherein ethnicity and nationality were crucial factors in the political, social, and cultural milieu of the society.31 Meanwhile, Jiang amplifies the status of the Chinese as valuable players in the Philippine political process, yet notes that the structure of Philippines politics never gave them ample political and social recognition as a people.32 The socio-psychological studies of Tan and Tan and de Vera provide a sketch of the available works, which measures the perceptions and impression of certain Filipino groups toward other ethnic groups and nationalities, particularly the Chinese.33 Their surveys reveal the prevailing perspectives on the Chinese population during the 1960s, in particular, the perceived “anti-Sinoism” (or anti-Sinicism) and the observed relative social distance between Filipinos and the Chinese population in the Philippines. Meanwhile, certain contemporary studies showcase the interrelatedness of cultural values, ethnic and diaspora contexts, and business interests. Clemente and Lagman, through an analysis of informal contracting in the Chinese business sector, attempt to portray a picture of the richness and interconnectedness of Chinese and Filipino relations in the context of social and cultural integration.34
By the late sixties, all Chinese shop signs in Manila had been banned—allegedly to encourage assimilation and to suppress potential communist propaganda Increasingly, the Chinese schools were criticized and restricted but no one seriously argued or desired that the Chinese students be absorbed into the overburdened Philippine educational system. As the naturalization process was made more difficult and expensive, there was renewed agitation against “‘insincere” naturalized citizens and the use of “dummies” to avoid economic restrictions.35
Cynical politicians view the Chinese as a source of graft while “sincere” politicos dedicate themselves to actually driving the Chinese out of the economic scene. In either case, the result is a gradually increasing pressure which builds up antagonistic attitudes. Tendencies towards amalgamation seem to have little effect on decreasing friction. The Chinese have a sex ratio of about five to one, which encourages a considerable amount of inter-marriage, and it is estimated that at least 10 per cent of the Filipino population have Chinese ancestry. In spite of this, even the wealthy Chinese are stigmatized as socially undesirable and their third generation Mestizo descendants are often themselves the most bitter Sinophobes. From the standpoint of ethnic origin, Filipinos regard the Chinese as Mongolian and themselves as part of the “Malay” race.36
Indirectly, this brings to light a form of bias and animosity that existed for varying reasons. Other larger political contexts, such as the nationalization of the bureaucracy and the economy, as well as the national elections, further aggravated the relatively dubious attitude of Filipino political and social players toward the Chinese.37 The Chinese in Manila were seen as competitors for opportunities and social mobility, and in comparison to other nationalities such as Spanish and Americans, the Filipinos view themselves as more distant to the Chinese.38 More broadly, as Weightman observes, the “Chinese became a convenient scapegoat to blame for all the ills of the country.”39
Historically, downtown Manila has been a home of the Chinese migrants and residents in the Philippines since the first century of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines.40 During the economic transformations that took place in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Chinese and Chinese mestizos, particularly in Manila, played active roles in domestic business engagements and foreign trade, and this continued until the initial decades of the century that followed, under the auspices of the American colonial regime.41 The commercial enterprises of the Chinese, centering on the area of Binondo and its nearby suburbs, turned out to be the primary business district of the city until the postwar era. Weightman, on the basis of local census reports in 1950, cites Binondo, Santa Cruz, Tondo, and San Nicolas as the residential and commercial centers of the Chinese in the city.42 In 1965, the Ruby Tower Apartments, a grand commercial-residential structure, six stories in height, and costing 1.5 million Philippine pesos, rose in the area as a relatively exclusive enclave for the Chinese and Chinese Filipino families in the city.43 The building had 76 residential units occupying the third to the sixth floors, while the first two floors were dedicated to office and commercial leasing.44
In the scholarly literature presented above, rarely is the aspect of natural hazards and disasters incorporated as a major component of the narrative of the Chinese population in the Philippines, particularly in Manila. Their stories of resilience and adaptation rely on how they dealt with the larger historical structures such as colonialism, national independence, and national integration, yet latent and microhistories like disaster experience and survival remain nascent. This article approaches the August 2, 1968 earthquake and the Ruby Tower tragedy as a historical focal point that shows a portrait of a minority population projected and nuanced as an integrant of ethnic and national history. Centering on the story of Ruby Tower yields the “Chineseness” of this urban disaster. Highlighting the events that took place in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake and bringing to light the stories of a group of people that experienced the tragedy contributes to an expansive appreciation of disasters as historical events that flatten out socio-cultural barriers and reveal much-hidden strains and traits of society, particularly how a cultural minority is looked upon and understood. On the one hand, the erection of Ruby Tower as a relatively exclusive residential enclave for the Chinese residents of Manila could be located in the wider context of an adaptive response to the social climate of the 1950s and 1960s. But, on the other hand, its destruction further complexified the said period’s prevailing compounded lived experience and perceptions towards the Chinese residents in Manila. The remnants of Ruby Tower are now a two-story building, Ruby Tower Hall, which constitutes the reconstructed first and second floor of the collapsed building (Figs. 3 and 4).
Ruby Tower Hall, the present location of the former Ruby Tower Apartments
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: screenshot of satellite street image from google maps, https://www.google.com/maps/search/Ruby+Tower+Memorial+Hall+in+Sta.+Cruz,+Manila/@14.6067033,120.9761361,17.21z?hl=en. accessed august 8, 2022.
Ruby Tower Hall, the present location of the former Ruby Tower Apartments
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: screenshot of satellite street image from google maps, https://www.google.com/maps/search/Ruby+Tower+Memorial+Hall+in+Sta.+Cruz,+Manila/@14.6067033,120.9761361,17.21z?hl=en. accessed august 8, 2022.Ruby Tower Hall, the present location of the former Ruby Tower Apartments
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: screenshot of satellite street image from google maps, https://www.google.com/maps/search/Ruby+Tower+Memorial+Hall+in+Sta.+Cruz,+Manila/@14.6067033,120.9761361,17.21z?hl=en. accessed august 8, 2022.
Ruby Tower Hall in Manila
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: taken on November 14, 2022
Ruby Tower Hall in Manila
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: taken on November 14, 2022Ruby Tower Hall in Manila
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: taken on November 14, 2022This study, though it posits this particular disaster experience as unique, recognizes the other notable earlier earthquake disasters that devastated Manila, where the Chinese population in Manila were victims or were severely affected as a collective sector of society, such as the June 3, 1863, and the July 8–10 and 20, 1880, earthquakes. In these earthquakes, the Chinese residents of the city were perennial victims and casualties of collapsed structures and houses.45 In the aftermath of the July 1880 earthquakes, Chinese prisoners were used as laborers for the reconstruction projects in Manila.46 In such cases of earthquake disasters, the Chinese were the silent, unnoticed sectors of society that were portrayed not as vulnerable, but as a group of people who had bad luck and worse fate was among the displaced and contestable marginalized segments of Spanish colonial society in the Philippines.
“Operation Ruby”: State and Sectoral Responses
As the sun rose in the skies on Manila of that fateful day of August 2, 1968, all eyes and attention were focused on the collapsed Ruby Tower Apartments in Santa Cruz, Manila. And from that morning until after almost a week of operations had been undertaken the government and different sectors of society in Manila at that time worked together, despite the lack of immediate resources and knowledge, and capacities to deal with such a large and difficult rescue operation. As one journalist lamented, “the Ruby crisis proved that the will to rescue matched the will to live” (Fig. 5).47 The Ruby Tower rescue operations became the center of the August 1968 disaster, not only because of the gravity of the destruction and loss of life involved, but more so as a result of how it touched critical issues such as corruption in the implementation of the existing building code and the lingering “animosity” of the general public toward the Chinese in Manila.
A description of the Ruby Tower rescue operations in a feature article
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: nancy t. lu, “the ruby crisis proved that the will to rescue matched the will to live,” sunday times magazine, august 8, 1968.
A description of the Ruby Tower rescue operations in a feature article
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: nancy t. lu, “the ruby crisis proved that the will to rescue matched the will to live,” sunday times magazine, august 8, 1968.A description of the Ruby Tower rescue operations in a feature article
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: nancy t. lu, “the ruby crisis proved that the will to rescue matched the will to live,” sunday times magazine, august 8, 1968.The Ruby Tower disaster can be considered a unique kind of disaster insofar as it was induced by a geological hazard and yet was magnified and made more complex by a spectrum of social dimensions in Manila at the time. One news report’s innocent description sums up this point: “Surprisingly, all the buildings surrounding the Ruby Towers came through the earthquake unscathed.”48 Newspapers reported that the foundations of the building simply gave up, bringing down the six floors where at least 90 Chinese families were sleeping. Moreover, the way the government responded, and the flow of resources and human capital support from non-governmental organizations revealed the character of disaster response management the society has during that time; different groups of people were present: documentation team, doctors, and religious and civilian volunteers.49
The first high government official to arrive at ground zero was Executive Secretary Rafael Salas and he immediately convened a group of people to operationalize the rescue effort.50 The moment that he realized the gravity of the situation, Salas appealed to the people through the media for additional cranes, acetylene torches, crowbars, and other equipment. A crane from a construction company, Washington Construction Co., arrived first.51 President Ferdinand Marcos and First Lady Imelda Marcos visited the disaster site late at night and stayed until early the following morning to oversee the rescue operations.52 President Marcos had earlier announced the suspension of classes in Manila and nearby suburbs in the capital region on August 2 and 3, and set up a nationwide relief operation for Manila.53 He was reported to have visited the disaster site three times, the last being late in the night of August 3, where General Manuel T. Yan, chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (afp), accompanied him. In a display both of concern and desire for publicity, the president inspected the Ruby Tower operations on crutches in a walking boot because of a sprain which he had sustained a few months prior while playing golf in Baguio and which had been aggravated after slipping in Malacañang. His eagerness to visit the site, giving him the benefit of the doubt, was a manifestation of his being the chief executive of the state. But looking at the whole picture, this can also be read as a good media stunt. It was an apparent attempt to create an image of a hands-on, in-action chief executive, to cover up the worsening economic conditions in 1969, and in preparation for his reelection bid at the end of the year.54
The official rescue force, called “Operation Ruby,” tapped both military and civilian institutions to work in the rescue operations (Fig. 6). The rescue force was headed by Major General Gaudencio V. Tobias, together with Brigadier General Emilio J. Zerrudo, zone commander of the Philippine Constabulary in Manila.55 Firefighters, law-enforcement officers, and other city employees, alongside members of the afp and the Manila Police District (mpd) and national welfare agencies personnel went to the disaster site on the afternoon of August 2. On the second day of the operations, an estimated two thousand rescue workers were in the Ruby Tower area.56 Rescuers utilized bulldozers and cranes in the grim task of recovering bodies, dead or alive, from under the collapsed building. The disaster area was the “picture of [a] feverish site”—dump trucks, cranes, jackhammers, and other equipment were in use, as were blowtorches, which hastened the operations as they were able to cut through steel and concrete.57 The Department of Social Work (dsw), together with the Philippine National Red Cross (pnrc), released and distributed funds and relief goods for the rescue operations. The dsw disbursed 130,750 Philippine pesos for relief and rehabilitation, and 10,000 for the victims of Ruby Tower, coming from the initial order of President Marcos regarding the disbursement of a 2-million-peso calamity fund; and the two agencies set up an equipment and food station near the disaster area.58 The authorities converted the Arellano High School into a rescue center, wherein four classrooms were converted into hospital rooms, and the rest as temporary shelters and food stations for rescuers and survivors.59 The Manila Health Department treated rescuers who suffered various injuries as part of the Manila city government’s rescue operation initiative led by Mayor Antonio J. Villegas.60 Moreover, records at the communication center set up for the disaster showed the names and information of the survivors, their condition, and to which hospital they had been brought.61 “Acts of kindness and generosity” prevailed at the disaster site, President Marcos said, adding that “voluntary contribution[s] to the government agencies have accelerated an endeavor in which speed is of the utmost importance.”62
And there was chaos. No proper equipment were around on the first day; only a flurry of contradictory suggestions on how to best save the victims. “Dig from the ground,” said one. “Start from the top,” said another. “Search horizontally, floor by floor,” cried someone else. “I know the buildings, let me tell you where you start digging,” insisted another. Too many were eager to help, and only succeeded in getting in help’s way.63
Aside from the apparent lack of large equipment during the first days of the operations, the intermittent rains, the heat, and unwarranted spectators hampered the rescue. Some rescuers lapsed due to dehydration, and many suffered cuts and bruises.64
The collapsed Ruby Tower after the August 2 earthquake
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: “the big quake: like a house of cards,” weekly nation, august 12, 1968.
The collapsed Ruby Tower after the August 2 earthquake
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: “the big quake: like a house of cards,” weekly nation, august 12, 1968.The collapsed Ruby Tower after the August 2 earthquake
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: “the big quake: like a house of cards,” weekly nation, august 12, 1968.Support from different sectors of society complemented the government’s shortcomings concerning resources, workforce, and equipment. The media covering the operations since the first day commended this support. One report described it as follows: “In this effort there appeared to be no end to human compassion. Assistance seemed to materialize from all segments of the community. A doctor from the province showed up at the disaster site and asked what he could do to help.”65 President Marcos, in a statement on August 3, commended the private individuals and organizations which helped in the rescue operations, stating that the preceding thirty-six hours had “witnessed innumerable acts of kindness by men, women, and even children.”66 These organizations included the Manila Boy Scouts, Rizal Boy Scouts, Chinese Scouts, Knox Methodist Church, Saint Mark’s Methodist Church, University of Santo Tomas Hospital medical interns, the rotc, and the United States Navy, Marines, and Air Force. A 120-man team composed of US Marines and sailors and additional 32 airmen rushed to the disaster scene on Friday night and helped in the rescue operations and pledged to remain in the area as long as they were needed. They donated five hundred units of blood plasma, fifty-five units of morphine, and two hundred body bags to the disaster area.67 Local governments and civic organizations, from Cagayan to Batangas pitched in by collecting and distributing medicine and supplies to stricken families.68 Aside from the volunteer rescue teams, anonymous individuals also sent donations to the rescue operations and hospitals, in the form of cash, clothes, food, and medicine.69
their probe’s final outcome got buried in the debris because it was becoming obvious that if the probe were to proceed to its logical conclusion, it would surely be shown that the City Hall was itself a Pandora’s Box of anomalies concerning illegal construction and other violations of building laws. And worse—the selling of sites occupied by creeks and estuaries. Which would explain that the perennial floods in Manila have become disastrous not necessarily because of the downpours but because of the destruction of the natural drainage system. Often it is human greed and folly that blend in making ordinary occurrences like typhoons and tremors into human tragedies.75
Ruby Tower and the Chinese Community in Manila: Stories of Survival
Deaths, Casualties, and Survivors of the Ruby Tower Tragedy
“Operation Ruby” was not only a nightmare of retrieving possible survivors from the collapsed Ruby Tower Apartments, but also a dilemma for hospital facilities, and post-disaster record keeping and documentation. The number of deaths in the Ruby Tower disaster surpassed the total number of deaths in any one incident in the preceding decades. One journalist described the deaths at Ruby Tower as follows: “Death stole in at the Ruby Tower like a thief in the night, carting away one huge haul of human loot: men, women, children, and even babies born or yet to be born.”76 Almost all the recorded deaths and injuries in the earthquake occurred at the Ruby Tower Apartments; less than a dozen deaths occurred other parts of Manila and across four provinces. The reports gathered from various sources reveal different information. For consistency, Table 2 below records the data on deaths (confirmed on the basis of a body having been recovered) and injuries from multiple locations hit by the earthquake.
Other reported fatalities not from Ruby Tower include Cynthia Quemil, ten years old, a victim of falling concrete in the Palomo Building in Manila; she was pronounced dead on arrival in St. Francis Xavier’s Hospital.77 In Tondo, the tremor wrecked several houses; an elderly Chinese couple, Tan Tio Teng and Fely Tan, were crushed to death when their house collapsed.78 One fisherman from Casiguran, Virgilio Valencia, thirty years old, died due to drowning when caught by the tidal wave while in the sea.79 Three unnamed deaths were reported in the provinces of Bulacan, Pampanga, and Pangasinan.80 Hospitals in Manila, such as the Philippine General Hospital (pgh), St. Francis Xavier Hospital, and Dr. Jose Reyes Hospital, were inundated with injured persons. American musician Jerry Wilson, who was brought to Manila by the Manila Symphony Society, was severely injured after being hit by concrete blocks while sleeping and was brought to the pgh.81
On the first day of the operations in Ruby Tower, the first to be brought out alive was Luis Godoy, 56 years old.82 Three young individuals who followed him were reported and were brought immediately to the hospital: Eufemia Leaño, 13; Zeni Lui, 16; and Rosa Villalobos, 15.83 At 7:30 p.m. on August 3, a glimmer of hope shone upon the rescuers as they were able to pull out a smiling and uninjured Filipino, and a blood-caked one-year old Chinese baby.84 Many of the people who were pulled out from the Ruby Tower debris were able to be brought to hospital, but most of them passed away due to extreme injuries.85 After four days of rescue operations, Major General Tobias expressed little hope for the roughly one hundred persons still buried in the collapsed tower.86 One major problem was that the painful identification of presumably dead residents of Ruby Tower had to be done haphazardly in dingy morgues and shadowy funeral parlors in Manila because the recovered bodies brought there were already decomposed beyond recognition.87 Another difficulty in tracing the work of the rescue operations was the variations in reported information by newspapers covering the event (Table 3). In the first five days of the coverage, there was vagueness in the reporting of casualties as to whether the numbers were solely those of the Ruby Tower site, or were the total numbers from all areas affected by the quake.
During the first few hours I was able to breastfeed the baby. Later I even had to let my elder son suck from my breast when he started asking for water. . . But much later on I could no longer feed them with my milk and trusting in the Divine Providence, we waited for rescuers to spot us.89
The rescuers saved them after almost nine hours; Oprenicio and Ferdinand were separated from their mother, and rescuers brought them to different hospitals. Due to the nature of the rescue, wherein the three of them were pulled out of the building at different times, information about the two children was lacking. Sister Jacqueline Blondin, M.I.C., a nun volunteering in the rescue operations, did the social work of locating the mother of the two. Oprenicio was found at the Chinese General Hospital (cgh), through the initials found in his clothing. Rescuers sent the mother to the Metropolitan Hospital. A newspaper story described the reunion of Florida and Oprenecio as follows: “There are the scenes of such a pathetic human drama all the onlookers could not help but shed tears of gladness over the happy family reunion. As the television camera zoomed in for a real close-up of the kicking baby whom the newscaster announced unknowingly as still unidentified that Sunday night the diminutive Oprenicio was already sleeping snugly under the watchful eyes of his loving mother.”90 Dr. Jaime Laya, a physician from the cgh, almost decided to adopt the baby.91
The Ruby Tower Tragedy as Individual and Collective Memory
In 2018, it was fifty years since the tragic Ruby Tower incident. Some news reports commemorating the event focused on the aspect of the earthquake’s magnitude, and the problems with public infrastructure leading to the passage of a revised and enhanced national building code.92 But the Ruby Tower incident is more than that. One aspect of this disaster that should be given greater attention in understanding its significance to or implications for the dynamics not only of the government’s response to the disaster but also of the way Filipinos perceive the disaster as a unique one is its “Chineseness.” Reports since the first day of operations portrayed all “deaths” as being of Chinese. A news report after the second day of rescue operations listed the names of fatalities in the Ruby Tower site:
A most interesting sidelight to the whole thing was the public reaction to the disaster. It was all very human. Now, we Filipinos, as a rule, don’t take too kindly to the Chinese. For a number of reasons: they refused to be assimilated, they tend to control our economy as well as our politics (the affluent ones are known to support crooked politicians or candidates from either side), they are the lenders, and we are but the borrowers, they (or many of them, anyway) don’t conform to our immigration laws, they secretly profess subversive doctrines, they use some of our women as dummies, and so on. . . . Now, the 600-odd occupants of the Tower represented the fear[ed] segment the Chinese community. When it fell did we rise in hurrah? Did we say, “Good for them, that means less of those necessary evils”? Of course not. We rushed to the wreckage and as we pulled the bodies out of the ruins with did not bother to ask whether he was an overstaying alien a usurer, a Red or a Pink. All we were interested in was whether it was dead or alive. If it was dead, well, at least it could be given a decent burial. If it was alive we cheered at the thought that the fellow human was back with us in the world of the living. The lesson in the Ruby Tower is simple: a human life no matter what the shade, creed, belief or custom, is the most precious thing. … Later perhaps when things shall have subsided into the deepest known each of the memory we Filipinos can go back to not talking too kindly to the Chinese—should they persist in their stubbornness to be assimilated. That’s all very Filipino, that’s all very Chinese—and that’s all very human, too.93
This sentiment, which one can read as an admission of partial alienation or ostracizing of the “Chinese,” is rooted both in the long history of Chinese presence in the country, which dates back to the Spanish era, and the international political milieu at that time. To further explain this idea it is important to point out that in the 1960s, the government of the Philippines, as in the past decades, was critical of the influence of socialism and communism, which must be contextualized in the larger “Cold War” dynamics of the era. Thus, the people or media, for example, already predisposed against communism, saw the Chinese residents in Manila as the bearers of the problematic communist doctrine. Chinese residents in the Philippines were also perceived as problematic in the sense that many were migrants from southern China, and in cultural history, southern Chinese were critical of their government, primarily because of language issues. Southern Chinese migrants are Hokkien-speaking, contrary to the “dominant” Mandarin-speaking government. In the history of China, this issue of dialect differences caused massive division for centuries.
One unfortunate aspect of the incident was the cases of looting at the disaster site (Fig. 7). As many of the people living in Ruby Tower were Chinese, they were deemed to be rich, and the collapsed building was perceived to harbor “treasures,” specifically gold. Captain Cenon D. Antonio of the Army Engineers Office and two mpd policemen were arrested by their comrades while allegedly looting at the Ruby Tower site.94 One patrolman, Jose San Juan, alerted other police officers when he saw Antonio carrying pieces of Chinese gold.95 Aside from this, the rescue team was able to recover forty-eight gold bars and 40,000 Philippine pesos during the rescue operations.
Looters or scavengers? People collecting goods at the Ruby Tower disaster area, August 1968
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: “the big quake: like a house of cards”; “the day manila trembled: sudden death and destruction,” sunday times, august 11, 1968.
Looters or scavengers? People collecting goods at the Ruby Tower disaster area, August 1968
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: “the big quake: like a house of cards”; “the day manila trembled: sudden death and destruction,” sunday times, august 11, 1968.Looters or scavengers? People collecting goods at the Ruby Tower disaster area, August 1968
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: “the big quake: like a house of cards”; “the day manila trembled: sudden death and destruction,” sunday times, august 11, 1968.Accounts of the survival of young Chinese high school students portray stories of both hope and the cessation of once promising lives in Manila. The earliest survivors were the three Teh brothers, Jaime, Alberto, and another, who dragged themselves out of the debris less than an hour after the collapse.96 Rescuers sent them to the Metropolitan Hospital. Jaime was a student at the Philippine Chinese High School.97 Their parents were nowhere to be found. The three became orphaned after the earthquake. Sixteen-year-old Mary Keng, a student from St. Stephen’s High School in Quezon, was the sole survivor of her family. She recalled the events of the earthquake and her rescue as follows: “When the earthquake started shaking the building and the concrete walls began to topple down my first instinct was to run out of the room. . . During the calm that shortly followed, I could sense a man somewhere up there looking around with his flashlight. I called to him for help.”98 Keng recalled that when she was rescued, her brother Arsenio, 19, and two other brothers, 17 and 15, were left inside.99 She added that residents of an apartment in a nearby street to Ruby Tower tried to insert a bottle of soft drink for her to drink, and later on used a water hose too. Francisco Uy, 20, a student from Chang Kai-shek High School in Catbalogan, Eastern Samar, told his story while in the hospital: “During those long trying hours of patient waiting I dared not move for fear that there would be another cave-in. My other companion in the same room kept complaining about the heavy pressure on his chest. Something has fallen on him. He also kept asking me for food. He told me that should he be rescued he would leave Manila for good.”100 Francisco heeded the advice of his friend, who would not survive; he left Manila afterward.
Meanwhile, the living will have to go on living. But the life will never be the same again. The orphaned, the homeless, the property-less, the physically maimed, and the mentally-affected will set about building a future for themselves. … But they will never forget. Surely, this earthquake has been called the strongest within living memory, cannot be forgotten too soon. For such as this, human memory has a way of limiting with fear, and painful remembrance, and sobriety, and, it is hoped, with new-found faith in an all-merciful Providence.103
In the five decades since the tragedy the Chinese Filipino community in Manila has memorialized the event in various ways. First, the Ruby Tower Memorial Shrine has been erected inside the Manila Chinese Cemetery; the memorial is composed of a tower with three pylon-like pillars with a ring on top of it, and a memorial that shows the names and photos of the victims of the tragedy (see Figs. 8 and 9). Another one is the Ruby Tower Disaster Victims Association (rtdva), a private non-governmental organization, which has an office at the original site of the former Ruby Tower Apartments. The rtdva was established in 1977, almost a decade after the disaster.104 The objective of the association is to help and extend financial support to the relatives of the victims of the 1968 earthquake.105 To gather money for their beneficiaries, the whole building of rtdva in Manila is being rented out for hardware shops and food stalls.106 The remaining living founders and their relatives are all living abroad, and most are in China; but every August 2, many of them still visit the Philippines to commemorate the Ruby Tower disaster.107
The Ruby Tower Memorial inside the Manila Chinese Cemetery
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: taken by the author, september 5, 2018.
The Ruby Tower Memorial inside the Manila Chinese Cemetery
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: taken by the author, september 5, 2018.The Ruby Tower Memorial inside the Manila Chinese Cemetery
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: taken by the author, september 5, 2018.
Photos and names of the people who died in the Ruby Tower disaster, listed inside the mausoleum of the Ruby Tower Memorial
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: taken on september 5, 2018.
Photos and names of the people who died in the Ruby Tower disaster, listed inside the mausoleum of the Ruby Tower Memorial
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: taken on september 5, 2018.Photos and names of the people who died in the Ruby Tower disaster, listed inside the mausoleum of the Ruby Tower Memorial
Citation: China and Asia 4, 2 (2023) ; 10.1163/2589465X-04020006
source: taken on september 5, 2018.For the Chinese survivors and the community as a whole, the cultural meaning of the tragedy goes beyond the aspects of natural hazards and urban structural disasters, it is more a social reminder of a tragedy that claimed the lives of hundreds of Chinese people who migrated to Manila and integrated themselves into a foreign land that they considered their own. The collapsed structure was razed and the remnants of the tower were completely erased from public visibility, but the memory of the tragedy remains in the minds of the survivors and the relatives of the casualties. Pierre Nora suggests a kind of remembering that involves the creation of spaces—lieu de mémoire, roughly translated as “sites of memory”108—a kind of memorialization wherein people manifest that there is no spontaneous memory and that they deliberately “create archives, maintain anniversaries, organize celebrations, pronounce eulogies” to maintain a memory of important events, thus making their individual and collective memories part of the grand historical narrative of a society.109 Thus the memorial for the victims of the Ruby Tower tragedy is a site of one portion, or one generation, of the Chinese residents of Manila’s memory of their relatives, of their experiences in the city, and of their struggle to be part of the Manila where they chose to live in. The social memory of the disaster event has been concretized, literally and figuratively, in a tower, alongside other previous generations of Chinese residents in Manila, as a symbol of the Ruby Tower, which was once hailed as a gem of residential living in downtown Manila.
Conclusion: the Chinese as Sectoral Victims of Major Earthquakes
The historical study of disasters and disaster response in the Philippines has been an emerging focus of research in the social sciences. The Philippine natural environment is increasingly regarded as a pressing agenda in the reconstruction of local and national histories. And this subfield of historical research engages the scientific community to meet the multi-disciplinary needs and prerequisites of research on disasters. Disasters are not and should not be confined to the rudiments of laboratory and numerical calculations. They are a political, social, and cultural reality that needs to be understood using proactive research, progressive policies, and inclusive cultural understanding. Reconstructing the history of society by centering on natural hazards produces a wide-ranging understanding of events and people’s experiences. As defined by Inkpen,110 a configurational approach to the occurrence of natural hazards is a viable approach to extracting historical ideas and mentalities from disastrous events, thus making the study an all-encompassing attempt to look at the history of the Philippine environment. The story of the Ruby Tower tragedy, which unearths political and cultural issues of its milieu, is a capsule history not only of a particular disaster experience but of a cultural minority that was victimized by a tragic event in an inopportune social climate.
The projection of a form of nationalism anchored on disaster response and collective social camaraderie tended to be inclusive and all-embracing, but vignettes of problematic cultural perceptions of a specific segment of society existed and need to be appropriately recognized. In portraying nationalism and modern state perspectives on disaster response, the August 2 earthquake is a call to revisit and recalibrate the overlooked aspects of the modernization programs in the country. And in the effort to highlight the projected view of collective responsibility in times of disaster, the Ruby Tower tragedy was an illustration of how political and cultural views merge, and how interpretations of calamities dominate and thrive on the latent understanding of the disasters—whether as being God’s wrath, a test to the Filipino resilience, and as mere cultural impressions. In short, disasters are not merely a cause of physical changes in the natural realm. Beyond the scientific interpretation using technical and quantitative approaches, the social and cultural character of these calamities yield more compounded and multi-faceted views on disasters. Societies tend to mix up competing ideas of nationalism and social inclusion with capitalist priorities and cultural reservations, despite and with manageable frictions and clashes, in crucial instances of sheer disorder and social entropy. In analyzing the history of disasters, social justice is a vision that seeks an inclusive reconstruction of the past. For this to come to fruition the first step, I think, is to document their existence and experiences as part of the grand narrative of disasters, such as this work on the experience of the Chinese residents in Manila in the aftermath of the Ruby Tower tragedy. From this, we can expand our discussion of the various socio-economic and cultural dimensions of disasters.
Kerby C. Alvarez is an Associate Professor at the Department of History, College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of the Philippines (up) Diliman. The National Commission for Culture and the Arts (ncca) awarded him the Young Historian’s Prize 2015. His research interests include environmental history, history of science, history of hazards and disasters in the Philippines and Southeast Asia, and the local history of his hometown, Malabon.
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The following intensities were recorded across the affected area (on the Rossi—Forel scale): Manila, intensity iv; Quezon City, the first shock was intensity V, and the second was intensity iii; in the provinces, Baguio (Benguet), intensity vi; Baler (Quezon, now in Aurora province), intensity vi; Aparri and Tuguegarao (Cagayan), intensity vi; Ambuklao (Benguet), intensity V; Lucena (Quezon) and Camalig (Albay), intensity V, and Vigan (Ilocos Sur), intensity V. Buan, “Extra! 800 Trapped in the Building”; “Hundreds Die in Quakes! 5-Story Building Crumbles,” Manila Times, August 3, 1968, 1–3.
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“Ruby Death Toll Now 143.”
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Castro, “82 Found in Collapsed Building.”
Castro, “82 Found in Collapsed Building.”
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Buan, “Extra! 800 Trapped in the Building”; “Ruby Death Toll Now 143.”
S. Omote, Y. Osawa, I. Skinner, and Y. Yoshimi, “Luzon Earthquake of 2 August 1968,” Report No. 977 (Paris: unesco, 1969), 483–92.
Edgar Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine Life, 1850–1898 (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 1965); Alfonso Felix, Jr., ed., The Chinese in the Philippines, vol. 1, 1570–1770 (Manila: Solidaridad Publishing House, 1966); Alfonso Felix, Jr., ed., The Chinese in the Philippines, vol. 2, 1770–1898 (Manila: Solidaridad Publishing House, 1969); Elliot C. Arensmeyer, “The Chinese Coolie Labor Trade and the Philippines: An Inquiry,” Philippine Studies 28, no. 2 (1980): 187–98; Rupert Hodder, “The Study of the Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia: Some Comments on its Political Meanings with Particular Reference to the Philippines,” Philippine Studies 53, no. 1 (2005): 3–31; Richard T. Chu, Chinese and Chinese Mestizos of Manila: Family, Identity, and Culture, 1869s–1930s (Leiden: Brill, 2010); Joshua Eng Sin Kueh, “The Manila Chinese: Community, Trade and Empire, 1570–1770” (PhD dissertation, Georgetown University, 2014); Jely A. Galang, “Living Carriers in the East: Chinese Cargadores in Nineteenth-Century Manila,” Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints 69, no. 1 (2021): 71–108; Dondy Pepito, ii, and G. Ramos, “‘China’s Curse’: Racialization of Opium Use in Colonial Philippines, 1903–1908,” Philippine Sociological Review 68, no. 1 (2020): 75–97.
Teresita Ang See, “The Ethnic Chinese as Filipinos,” in Ethnic Chinese as Southeast Asians, ed. Leo Suryadinata (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997), 158–202; Caroline Hau, The Chinese Question: Ethnicity, Nation, and Region in and beyond the Philippines (Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2014); Juliet Lee Uytanlet, The Hybrid Tsinoys: Challenges and Homogeneity as Sociocultural Constructs among the Chinese in the Philippines (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016).
See Chien-Wen Kung, Nationalist China, Anticommunism, and the Philippine Chinese, 1930s–1970s (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022).
Margaret Wyant Horsley, “Sangley: The Formation of Anti-Chinese Feeling in the Philippines—a Cultural Study of the Stereotypes of Prejudice” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1950).
George Henry Weightman, “A Preliminary Ecological Description of the Chinese Community in Manila,” Philippine Sociological Review 3, no. 4 (1955): 23–27; George Henry Weightman, “Anti-Sinicism in the Philippines,” Asian Studies 5, no. 1 (1967): 220–31; George Henry Weightman, “The Philippine-Chinese Image of the Filipino,” Pacific Affairs 40, nos. 3–4 (1967–1968): 315–23; George Henry Weightman, “From Aliens to Cultural Minority,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 16, no. 2 (1985): 161–79.
Joseph P. L. Jiang, “The Chinese and the Philippine Political Process,” Asian Journal of Politics and History 13, no. 2 (1967): 189–203.
Allen L. Tan, “A Survey of Studies on Anti-Sinoism in the Philippines,” Asian Studies 6, no. 2 (1968): 198–207; Allen L. Tan and Grace E. de Vera, “Inter-Ethnic Images Between Filipinos and Chinese in the Philippines,” Asian Studies 7, no. 2 (1969): 125–33.
Tina Clemente and Marco Lagman, “Connection, Contracts and Sanctions: Informal Commercial Contracting Among Chinese in Metro Manila,” Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia 51, no. 1 (2015): 39–s74.
Weightman, “From Aliens to Cultural Minority,” 170.
Chester Hunt, “The ‘Americanization’ Process in the Philippines,” India Quarterly: A Journal of International Affairs 7 (Apr.–June 1956): 126.
Jiang, “The Chinese and the Philippine Political Process,” 195–203.
See the analysis of Tan, “A Survey of Studies on Anti-Sinoism in the Philippines.”
Weightman, “Anti-Sinicism in the Philippines,” 229.
See Alberto Santamaria, O. P., “The Chinese Parian (El Parian de los Sangleyes),” in The Chinese in the Philippines, vol. 1, 1570–1770, ed. Alfonso Felix, Jr. (Manila: Solidaridad Publishing House, 1966), 67–118; Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine Life, 1850–1898, 3–44.
See the extensive work by Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine Life, 1850–1898; and Chu, Chinese and Chinese Mestizos of Manila.
Weightman, “A Preliminary Ecological Description of the Chinese Community in Manila,” 25.
“The Big Quake: Like a House of Cards,” 77.
Ens. G. J. Whitman, “Ruby Tower Disaster,” The Naval Civil Engineer 9, no. 11 (Nov. 1968): 24.
Susana Maria Ramirez Martín, El terremoto de Manila de 1863: Medidas politicas y económicas (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientifícas, 2006), 25–27; “Telegram of the Governor-General to the Overseas Minister, 20 July 1880,” Terremotos que han tenido lugar en la isla de Luzon en los días 18 y 20 de Julio de 1880, Ultramar 471, Expediente 1, nos. 6 and 7, Archivo Histórico Naciona (ahn), Madrid, Spain.
“Report of the Governor General to the Overseas Ministry,” Terremotos que han tenido lugar en la isla de Luzon en los días 18 y 20 de Julio de 1880, Ultramar 471, Expediente 1, no. 27, ahn. This measure was consulted thoroughly with Madrid so as will not violate any existing laws and international agreements with China. For example, they studied the possible implications of this action for the 1877 Sino-Spanish Treaty regarding the prohibition of recruitment of Chinese coolies in the Caribbean. The civil government tasked the Negociado de Politica de la Subsecretaria to check if the measure would violate some provisions of the December 6, 1878, treaty with China, and the Ley de Extranjeria of July 1870. See F. van Dongen, “The Cautious Imperialists,” in Acta Historiae Neerlandica (Historical Studies in the Netherlands), vol. 4 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970), 154; “Report of the Governor General to the Overseas Ministry,” Terremotos que han tenido lugar en la isla de Luzon en los días 18 y 20 de Julio de 1880, Ultramar 471, Expediente 1, no. 28, ahn. As an additional note, the government implemented the practice of using Chinese prisoners as laborers since the new tax system was imposed in 1828, wherein people who failed to pay their taxes or those who have committed crimes could be tapped as laborers in public works of the government. They were paid, but the government deducted their salaries according to their unpaid taxes, or criminal fines.
Nancy T. Lu, “The Ruby Crisis Proved That the Will to Rescue Matched the Will to Live,” Sunday Times Magazine, August 8, 1968.
Castro, “82 Found in Collapsed Building.”
Abesamis, “A Race with Time at the Ruby Rescue!”
Buan, “Extra! 800 Trapped in the Building.”
Buan, “Extra! 800 Trapped in the Building.”
Castro, “82 Found in Collapsed Building.”
Buan, “Extra! 800 Trapped in the Building”; “The Big Quake: Like a House of Cards.”
Lewis E. Gleeck, Jr., President Marcos and the Philippine Political Culture (Manila: Loyal Printing, 1987), 74–77.
Antonio Zumel and Marius Panuncialman, “200 Still in Wreck,” Manila Daily Bulletin, August 4, 1968, 1, 15; “Hundreds Die in Quakes!”
Zumel and Panuncialman, “200 Still in Wreck.”
Zumel and Panuncialman, “200 Still in Wreck.”
Zumel and Panuncialman, “200 Still in Wreck.”; “The Big Quake: Like a House of Cards”.
Zumel and Panuncialman, “200 Still in Wreck.”
“Ruby Death Toll Now 143”; Zumel and Panuncialman, “200 Still in Wreck.”
“Ruby Death Toll Now 143.”
“Ruby Death Toll Now 143.”
Abesamis, “A Race with Time at the Ruby Rescue!”
“Ruby Death Toll Now 143.”
Zumel and Panuncialman, “200 Still in Wreck.”
“Ruby Death Toll Now 143.”
“Ruby Death Toll Now 143”; Zumel and Panuncialman, “200 Still in Wreck.”
Castro, “82 Found in Collapsed Building.”
Zumel and Panuncialman, “200 Still in Wreck.”
Flores, The Luzon Earthquakes, 483.
Flores, The Luzon Earthquakes, 484.
Oca, “The Geology of Greater Manila,” 175.
Omote et al., “Luzon Earthquake of 2 August 1968,” 38.
Arnold Azurin, “Nature’s Fury, Human Folly,” Sunday Times Magazine, July 22, 1990, 5–8.
Azurin, “Nature’s Fury, Human Folly.”
Nancy T. Lu, “The Ruby crisis proved that the will to rescue matched the will to live.” The Sunday Times Magazine, August 18, 1968.
“Hundreds Die in Quakes!”
Castro, “82 Found in Collapsed Building.”
Rous, “Earth Cracks in Quezon.”
Rous, “Earth Cracks in Quezon.”
“Hundreds Die in Quakes!”
“The Day Manila Trembled: Sudden Death and Destruction,” Sunday Times, August 11, 1968.
“Ruby Death Toll Now 143.”
Zumel and Panuncialman, “200 Still in Wreck.”
Zumel and Panuncialman, “200 Still in Wreck.”
“The Big Quake: Like a House of Cards.”
Lu, “The Ruby crisis proved that the will to rescue matched the will to live.”
Lu, “The Ruby Crisis.”
Lu, “The Ruby Crisis.”
Lu, “The Ruby Crisis.”
Lu, “The Ruby Crisis.”
Gwen de la Cruz, “Looking Back: The 1968 Casiguran Earthquake,” Rappler, August 2, 2014, https://www.rappler.com/move-ph/issues/disasters/65064-casiguran-earthquake; Ellalyn de Vera Ruiz, “Looking Back: Ruby Tower Disaster, Casiguran Quake,” Manila Bulletin, August 2, 2018, https://news.mb.com.ph/2018/08/02/looking-back-ruby-tower-disaster-casiguran-quake/.
Flores, “The Ruby Rescue: Gem of a Story.”
Castro, “82 Found in Collapsed Building.”
The Big Quake: Like a House of Cards.”
Lu, “The Ruby Crisis.”
Lu, “The Ruby Crisis.”
Lu, “The Ruby Crisis.”
Lu, “The Ruby Crisis.”
Lu, “The Ruby Crisis.”
Abesamis, “A Race with Time at the Ruby Rescue!”
Rosario M. Querol, “Floods, Earthquakes, The Pope’s Encyclical and Imelda’s Projects,” Weekly Nation, August 19, 1968, 42.
Querol, “Floods, Earthquakes.”
Teresita Dy, director of the Ruby Tower Disaster Victims Association (rtdva), interview with the author, September 10, 2018.
Teresita Dy, interview.
Teresita Dy, interview.
Teresita Dy, interview.
Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” trans. Marc Roudebush, Representations 26 (1989): 7–24.
Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 12.
Rob Inkpen, “The Philosophy of Geology,” in A Companion to the Philosophies of History and Historiography, ed. Avezer Tucker (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons Blackwell, 2011), 325.