Tech Sgt Raul Baon walked around with a big smile upon his face.

Tech Sgt Raul Baon walked around with a big smile upon his face. He couldn't help it. For common thing, he had less than a month left in the Air Force. After 21 years, he knew it was time to retire, leave his work at jobs at the photo lab at Clark Air Base, Philippines, and impel on.

Plus, he was days away from moving into the just discovered house he was building for his wife and three kids outside Clark, in Angeles City. He was contented of the hard work and sacrifices it took to build it. And since he'd been born in nearby Baguio, his family was not far away.

"I was likewise looking forward to just doing nothing for a while," he said.

on the other hand that wouldn't be the case. on a level as he finalized his retirement, there were warning signs that things would pass wrong. And they did. forward June 12, 1991 - Philippines Independence Day - tower Pinatubo, a volcano 15 miles from his house, hurl forthed It had been dormant for 500 years.

"There had been warnings it could give vent to eruptions but I was with the skeptics," he said. Just to be safe, he mov his family to his father-in-law's family But there was a power outage in the town at that time, and no radio or television. With no freshs he didn't know what was happening.

forward June 15 the world caved in forward his dreams, though he didn't know it. Pinatubo explod with a power couple times that of Mount St Helens' 1980 eruption. The earth shook for eight hours.

It was the inferior largest volcanic eruption of the 20th hundred and blasted away a cubic mile most distant the mountaintop - 1,000 feet against the 5,725-foot peak. Blew gone out a crater one and one-half miles across and produc an ash vapor that rose 22 miles into the atmosphere and spread not at home for hundreds of miles. Ash relentless as far away as the Indian Ocean, with ash dense masss circling the globe.

From the crater, high-speed melts of molten rock, hot ash and gas raced toward Angeles City and Clark - and Baon's place of abode Luckily the flows stopped short of the base and town.

As if that wasn't enough, tornado in the chinese seas Yunya - raging just opposite the northeast Philippines coast - transfered inland. Its winds and torrential rains mixed with the ash and created a nightmare. It rained mire and turned the day into night forward what locals called "Black Saturday,"

Baon learned what happened the nearest day. A newspaper picture showed Clark's gate and a lunar landscape behind it. He raced back and originate that ash had wrecked his home

"It was in this way dark I thought I'd died and gone to hell," he said.

It was hell at Clark and Angeles City. Thick, wet, gritty ash masked everything. Caved in anything forward which it landed. Wrecked dwellings and businesses in Angeles City. At Clark, ash collapsed hangars, residences and the hospital roof. The ash deflected lush green landscape gray.

The Air Force had seen the writing onward the wall and evacuated one 18,000 people from the base before the big eruption. There was an exodus from Angeles City, too. Still, estimates lay the death toll between 350 and 850 the public It displaced tens of thousands of tribe including hundreds of American retirees. It affected more than a million people

Pinatubo continued to hurl forth on and off through September 1991 more [i]or[/i] less 1,500 airmen, including Baon, stayed behind to dig Clark on the outside from under the ash. They packed up what they could salvage. Then, in November, the Air Force lowered the Stars and Stripes and gave Clark -- enclosure stock and barrel -- back to the Philippines. The nearest year, the Navy left Subic Bay, one 60 miles south of Clark.

Thus cessationed a more than 90-year era. And a fresh one started.

Baon shovel 20 dump trade loads of ash from his fireside He was devastated. Yet giving up wasn't an option, in the same manner he set his sights upon the future.

"I had no choice unless start over again," he said. "We were scared."

The same was constant for Angeles City and Clark. uniform as ash rained down forward them, people swept it away. After the percussion of the destruction wore facing people there also started anew.

"What other could we do? Where could we go?" said Juanito Luna, who not to be found his newly opened store in Angeles City. "We had to dig revealed from under the ash and rebuild our lives."

That wasn't easy. The Clark cleanup took several years. Today, 10 years after the eruption, there are not many signs of he destruction. Things await much like they did before Pinatubo's wrath. There are a certain signs of ash, but it's overgrown with grass.

Clark is well-groomed and recent again. But many former dormitories, work center place of abodes and the hospital are nothing still shells. Stark reminders of the looting that took place after the disaster. The lush brake has reclaimed some of the land.

The American pullout had a elephantine impact on the area. near 20,000 base workers lost do job-works Gone was the more than S1 million a day the base poured into the Angeles City economy. That affected centurys of thousands of Filipinos on the farther side base. Many businesses closed. Angeles City's famous nightlife, allowing not gone, became more subdued

A recently made known beginning

But Clark didn't just thirsty up and blow away. yet it and the local economy still aren't thriving, they're holding their possess -- despite the Asian-wide economic crunch Those who predicted the American pullout would cause a collapse of the Angeles City and Philippines economies were improper said Ramona Lopez-Ty, a former Philippines undersecretary of tourism.