Liquefaction (noun) is defined by a dictionary as the process of becoming liquid. A virtually unfamiliar word to city residents before July 16, 1990, it became a household word when an Intensity 7.7 earthquake struck in the city on that day.
 
            It may be a simple word, but it gave a great lesson to the residents who found out that the land they stood on can liquefy and that vehicles, houses, big buildings and everything can just sink on the watery and sandy ground.
 
            At about past four o’clock (Daylight savings time) in the afternoon of that day, the ground furiously shook for almost a minute. Every vehicles and structures and trees violently swayed back and forth while the parts of the ground alternately opened and closed. When the first tremor stopped, water gushed forth from the Earth and almost the entire city was inundated with at least knee-deep water.
 
            But the liquefaction phenomenon, no matter how scary, could have saved many lives during that day. Instead of collapsing and pinning down people inside them with heavy concrete, many buildings merely tilted on their sides and sank into the ground by several feet.
 
            The city does not sit of a firm ground perhaps because most areas used to be marshlands and filled with filling materials, according  to old-time residents.       
 
            Having learned this lesson, the city government, as a policy, discouraged the construction of buildings more than three-storey high, City Administrator Rafael Baraan said. The city also requires tall buildings to have piling foundations so that they will have stable footing.
 
            “Even private residential owners are now aware of having strong structural foundations,” Baraan noted. City engineers are strict with this term and won’t give permit if the plan for a residential unit does not show strong foundation.
 
            To prevent loss of lives when a similar disaster strikes, the city government  discouraged the use of a two-story building at the city high school which was suspected of having structural defects.
 
            “We had it subjected to a structural evaluation but it is not being used right now because the Department of Public Works and Highways has not given us a definite position on the matter,” Baraan said.    He added that the city government will conduct a disaster preparedness day on July 19.
 
            Gonzalo Duque, president of the Lyceum Northwestern University, said the lesson learned from the 1990 earthquake was that the “city was unprepared” for such a disaster.
            “There was no holistic approach on how to respond to disasters. There were no earthquake drills or any preparations at all,” Duque, who was vice governor in 1990, said. He recommended the Emergency Preparedness Handbook published by the Regional Development Council as a must-read by all the city residents so that “they will know what to do when there are disasters like fire, tsunami, floods, storms and earthquakes.”
 
The Region I Medical Center, then the provincial hospital managed by the provincial government of Pangasinan was “reduced to the ground” after the almost minute-long earthquake.
 
“My superiors said, ‘Do not be a hero’ and just send patients to private hospitals.” Dr. Jesus Canto, then the hospital’s officer in charge. “There was not enough money then for hospital construction.”
 
Canto was in a quandary as patients were streaming into the hospital and private hospitals cannot accommodate them all, being poor patients. “Why should I do?” Canto said.
By “accident,” he saw empty bunkhouses of the National Housing Authority there in Bonuan Boquig. He had the bunkhouses dismantled by hospital personnel and fashioned into hospital rooms. Thus a temporary hospital was constructed and used for about two years.  It even became a model for Baguio City and the town of Agoo in La Union.
 
Because of disobeying his superior’s order “not to be a hero,” Canto was asked to prepare his walking papers. “But after I explained what happened, I was promoted as the hospital director instead of being dismissed,” he said.
 
“A lesson I learned was one should be resourceful and knowledgeable when dealing with disasters,” Canto said.
 
The RIMC is much better prepared now with the creation of Stop Death                                          task force which is responsible for any disaster, natural or man-made.
 
Businesswoman Armi Bangsal-Lorica can just look back with grief to July 16, 1990. He lost her father Loreto S. Bangsal, then the chair of the provincial agriculture and fishery council of Pangasinan, who had a heart attack as the Earth was shaking on that day.
 
“I learned that life is short and that it can be taken away anytime,” Bangsal-Lorica said. “My father was still young, only 65.”