THE eruption of Mount Pinatubo on June 15, 1991 devastated Pampanga with horrors similar to the tragedies visited on the economy and on families by the tsunami that recently hit Japan.
Since then, for the past 20 years, Pampanga administrations of various political parties have tried to rebuild the province. Only now, under the leadership of Governor Lilia Garcia-Pineda, a member of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s KAMPI-Lakas party, has the province recovered to its whole former self. Minus, of course, those parts of the province that are still submerged under tons of Pinatubo’s volcanic ashes.