By Patrick Matbob
“I saw the dead lying naked every where.
Some of those still alive begged me for water. But where could I get water?”
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| Mt Lamington destruction |
“When I reached the village, I found that
everyone was killed,” said the 75-year-old priest who, at the time, was a young
teacher on Christmas vacation in his village.
“Girls, young men, women, babies lying
naked, dead . . .”
Relating his experiences 50 years later, Fr
Franklin groped for words to describe the shocking scenes that confronted him in
this worst disaster ever to hit PNG. Fr Otoha survived because he and a number
of school children preparing for Sunday sports had managed to flee the
eruption, which engulfed the area in matter of minutes.
He said the first explosion occurred about
10:30am and they fled. At one stage, the place was completely covered by smoke
and they were lost in darkness.
“We prayed, and the wind cleared the area.
We saw our way and ran, finally arriving at a house built with permanent
materials. We went in and were saved from the second explosion.
He was one of the ever-diminishing number
of survivors who gathered at Hohorita village on January 21 last year to
commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Mt Lamington disaster.
Invited guests at the ceremony included
retired Anglican Archbishops, Sir David Hand and George Ambo, Bill Schleusener,
a plantation manager in the area during the eruption, and government and church
leaders.
The ceremony witnessed by about 1000
people, began with a mass in the morning and ended with speeches and lunch in
the afternoon.
In the middle of the mass, at exactly,
10.40am there was a moving three-minute silence to remember those who were
killed 50 years ago when the mountain blew its top spewing clouds of fiery hot
ashes and lava. Many survivors wept openly as the bugler played the Last Post recalling their loved ones who
perished in the eruption.
Bill Schleusener, now 76, was the manager
at Sangara plantation at the time of the eruption. He was the first European to
enter the disaster area the day after the eruption and was at Hohorita for the
50th Anniversary.
“I was on my cocoa plantation at Sangara.
On that morning we were all just frightened by this massive cloud, and I don’t
mean just a small cloud, a massive cloud stretching 180 degrees just coming.
“My labour line and their wives ran to my
house scared stiff and asked what are we going to do?
“I didn’t know what I could do.”
Mr Schleusener said down came the ashes,
and pebbles and they took shelter in his store.
On Monday morning, he and his foreman,
Sagahi from Isavita village went to see if they could help or save anyone.
Two miles up the road they saw scenes of
horror.
“The dead just littered the road,” Bill
recalled.
“In Endeba village, there was hardly a tree
standing up . . . the houses flattened.
“The tragic thing was just death, men,
women, children, pigs, dogs, roosters . . . The eerie part about it was the
silence. No, nothing, not a bird, not a dog . . . there was no sound.”
As they went further they found hundreds
more bodies. At Higaturu they found the first Europeans.
“District Commissioner Cess Cowley was the
first one I found.
“You can’t help the dead. We couldn’t bury
them; we couldn’t do anything,” Mr Schleusener said.
For the last 50 years, Mr Schleusener could
never forget January 21.
“I personally usually have a little cry on
the 21st of January,” he said.
Last year was his first trip back to the
disaster area when he visited Isavita. When the names of the 50 dead in Isavita
was read out, he could not help shedding a tear.
Mr Schleusener came back last year, perhaps
for the last time, to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the
eruption.
“I wanted to be here, I wanted to share the
grief because I share my own grief with my own friends,” he said. He now lives
on Gold Coast, Australia.
Retired Archbishops Sir David Hand said:
“If I had been here on January 21, 1951, I would have been killed.”
Sir David had been parish priest at the old
Sangara mission near Mt Lamington.
He had been in Sydney after his
consecration as a bishop and arrived four days after the eruption. However, as
soon as he returned, Archbishop Philip Strong directed him to oversee the
reconstruction and the resurrection of the mission and the area, which was also
destroyed by the eruption.
Sir David said after the eruption, the area
around Mt Lamington was just a sea of grey pummice.
“There was nothing, just death and
destruction.
Sir David stayed in a tent at the site,
which is now Popondetta and built a station and a church, the first after the
eruption, and named it Resurrection.
Member for Ijivitari, Simon Kaumi, also
attended the event and donated K10,000 towards the construction of a memorial
monument in Oro Province to commemorate the eruption.
Mr Kaumi presented the cheque to the Mt
Lamington 50th Anniversary committee during the ceremony at Hohorita
village.
He challenged the people in the area to
give land so that the monument could be erected quickly.
Ends . . .
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