Two disasters, two paths, a sweet-and-sour result

In one of history’s strange twists and accidents, the biggest natural disasters to befall the Philippines have happened when an Aquino was on watch as the president of the Republic. To yellow loyalists, this happenstance is fortuitous, perhaps a stroke of luck. To non-admirers and independents, it is fateful and ominous, a twist of fate and run of bad luck.

On June 15, 1991, Mt Pinatubo, a volcano located at the tripoint of the provinces of Zambales, Tarlac and Pampanga, erupted and produced the second largest terrestrial eruption of the 20th century, exceeded only by the 1912 eruption of Novarupta in the Alaska Peninsula.