SURVIVORS of the 1990 Killer Earthquake that shook north and central Luzon have held on to their memories of that disaster over 25 years since.

This is a fact Holy Angel University’s (HAU) Center for Kapampangan Studies (CKS) found in a project to memorialize the disaster—and the strength the survivors displayed amid their loss.

“It’s as if it happened yesterday,” said Lia Pangilinan, author of “Our Common Fault: Stories of Loss and Survival in the July 16, 1990 Earthquake,” documenting in 250 pages over 30 stories from those who made it through the calamity. “They never forgot,” she said of the narratives. “They remembered every detail. Some still cried when they told me their stories.”

The book was launched at HAU in Angeles City last June 14, the eve of the 25th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, marked with the opening of the Pinatubo Museum.

“The 1990 earthquake and the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo were the one-two punch that nearly knocked us out,” said Robby Tantingco, CKS director, explaining the connection between the two disasters. It is believed the 1990 earthquake ultimately triggered the Pinatubo eruption. Tantingco wrote the preface of “Our Common Fault.” He authored “Pinatubo: The Volcano in our Backyard,” the 2012 winner of the National Book Award in the science category.

With the project, Pangilinan spent half a year interviewing survivors from the provinces devastated by the magnitude-7.8 quake. She also gathered stories from the cities heavily damaged by the temblor.

“We followed the Philippine Fault, specifically the Digdig Fault. We followed that as much as we could,” said Pangilinan. It was the Digdig Fault that caused the earthquake, hence “our common fault.”

Pangilinan’s work was supplemented with pieces from a recent call for submissions as well as winning memoirs from a contest held by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

The accounts concretized the disaster for her, said Pangilinan, who was born in 1992. “I’ve heard stories but never really paid attention to them,” she said. “When I talked to [the survivors], that was when I felt and understood the effects on them, in all aspects of their being.”

“Our Common Fault” is available at   Holy Angel University Bookstore at P350. Call 0999-9590601; e-mail [email protected].