Schneider recounts volcano evacuation in new book
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A Marietta woman has recounted her experiences in the Philippines and when Mount Pinatubo erupted in her recently published book.
"Our Upheavals" by Melanie D. Schneider was written from more than 100 tapes she recorded in the two years while she lived in the Philippines teaching family and consumer science at Wagner High School at Clark Air Force Base through the Department of Defense Dependent Schools. She recorded a tape each week and sent them home.
"I told them to keep the audio tapes because one day I was going to write a book," Schneider said.
She started working on the book five years ago at the 30th anniversary of the eruption, listening and taking notes from the tapes, a time-consuming task that took many hours, Schneider said.
"I really enjoyed reliving the experiences," she said.
The 35th anniversary of the eruption was on June 15.
Pinatubo, a 4,800 foot mountain in the Zambales Mountains, was dormant for over 500 years before it came to life in April 1991. The ash and sulfurous gases spewed into the atmosphere from the eruption, the second largest in the 20th century, caused a global temperature drop for almost two years.
Everyone at Clark Air Force Base was advised to leave as geologists predicted an eruption was imminent, she said. Her husband, Marietta attorney James Schneider, a former Washington County prosecuting attorney, left shortly before the eruption.
When he left at the end of the March, he had never heard of Pinatubo, she said.
His wife, kids Ty and Tara and mother stayed behind and were evacuated to the Subic Bay Naval Station. Clark is about 10 miles from Pinatubo.
"I saw the huge ash cloud after it popped its cork," Schneider said. "It was beautiful."
The beauty was short-lived. Making land fall at the same time of the eruption was Typhoon Yunya that caused rain mixed with ash to pour down upon the communities near the volcano, causing mud flows and other calamities.
The typhoon also expedited the evacuation from Subic Bay, Schneider said. Air travel was nearly impossible because of the ash on the runways, so 14,500 people from Clark were evacuated to Subic Bay and from there on U.S. aircraft carriers to Cebu from where they were flown to the states on military aircraft.
During the evacuation, the typhoon made landfall and mixed with ash blocking the sunlight, causing about 36 straight hours of darkness, she said. It was the scariest time, Schneider said.
"That's when I thought we were really in danger," she said.
Schneider was 39-years old when she and her family left for the Philippines in 1989 to teach at the high school for two years. Teaching overseas was a dream come true, she said.
Her husband gave up his law practice and the children left high school to go with her. Husband Jim arrived at Clark about six weeks later.
"Our Upheavals" is about the struggles living in the Philippines, which was a second-world country at the time, and how the family coped with living there, Schneider said.
"I enjoyed my experiences teaching there," Schneider said. "We made many friends and did a lot of traveling."
The book, 208 pages, is $21.99 in hardback from amazon.com and Barnes and Noble and $9.99 for the Kindle version.