By Dr. Frank A. Blazich, Jr
Throughout the proud history of the Naval Construction Force, the Seabees have overcome a variety of obstacles, be they enemy forces, geography, or climate. In June 1991, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Republic of the Philippines found the Seabees adding “volcano cleanup” to their repertoire of skills. In the ensuing months as part of Operation Fiery Vigil, members of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion (NMCB) 3, 4, 5 and Construction Battalion Maintenance Unit (CBMU) 302 “kicked ash” and cleared hundreds of thousands of tons of material from Naval Station Subic Bay and Naval Air Station Cubi Point.
Nestled in the Zambales Mountains on the island of Luzon, the 4,800-foot tall Mount Pinatubo had remained dormant for over 600 years before experiencing renewed volcanic activity in April 1991. A period of local earthquakes followed by steam explosions commenced a rapid ten-week period of increasing signs of an impending explosion. Only nine miles east of the volcano stood Clark Air Base, home to over 15,000 USAF personnel and dependents, all directly in the path of possible pyroclastic flows and intense ash fall. Approximately 25 miles to the southwest stood Subic Bay and Cubi Point, both locations that volcanologists and emergency planners considered safe, and outside the range of serious damage. On June 9, Pinatubo experienced a minor eruption, prompting the evacuation of 14,500 people from Clark to the naval installations the following day. A 50-mile long convoy of vehicles snaked its way to the coast, and the evacuees soon overwhelmed every base facility. Two days later, Pinatubo erupted again, throwing ash and smoke 10 miles high over an area of 15 miles in width, blanketing Clark with fine ash.
These minor eruptions were but precursors to the main event on June 15. At 5:55AM local time, the second largest volcanic eruption of the twentieth century began as Pinatubo erupted in a climactic fury. A lateral blast of searing hot gas, rock, and ash immediately enveloped an area six miles wide to the cloud base. Clark, and most of Luzon, fell into almost total darkness as the ash cloud grew to cover an area of 48,000 square miles. Further compounding the hellish situation, Typhoon Yunya made landfall on the island around noon on the fifteenth, passing approximately 50 miles northeast of Pinatubo as it degraded into a tropical storm. Yunya’s winds and rain mixed with Pinatubo’s ash, creating a gray, slurry-like mud which began to rain down on Clark, Subic Bay, and Cubi Point.
Crammed into every available space at Subic Bay and Cubi Point, the ordeal was just beginning for more than 28,000 Americans service members, civilian employees, and dependents. Without power and the skies black from the ash, everybody huddled by flashlights or candles throughout the nine-hour eruption listening or praying. Outside, a chorus of slashing winds and torrents of muddy rain serenaded the Americans, amidst earthquakes of varying intensity. Worse sounds began to be heard, from lightning strikes to falling trees, to the jarring crashes of roofs collapsing under the weight of wet ash. At Clark, over 100 buildings collapsed and another 500 suffered damage. Lahars, mudflows of pyroclastic material, debris, and water with the thickness of concrete, roared into Clark and irreparably damaged the base resulting in its closure in November 1991. At Subic Bay, over 150 buildings collapsed or experienced significant structural damage from the one-two of Pinatubo and Yunya. Anywhere from six to fourteen inches of wet ash covered literally everything at Subic Bay and Cubi Point. Cleanup seemed difficult to impossible, but no volcano ever before had to contend with the Seabees.
On June 10, 1991 Admiral Charles Larson, Commander in Chief of U.S. Pacific Command, activated Joint Task Force – Fiery Vigil to protect American lives and property. A massive evacuation effort by sea and air swiftly commenced to move Clark’s population and some of Subic and Cubi’s residents back to the U.S. For the Seabees, a detachment of 90 members of NMCB 3 set to work at Subic Bay from June 15 – 20 clearing 5,000 feet of runways to permit C-130 operations to help evacuate out personnel and ferry in relief supplies. To supplement the effort, 100 additional members of NMCB 3 arrived from the main body in Guam to join CBMU 302, stationed at Subic Bay. Furthermore, detachments of NMCB 4 were redirected from a scheduled deployment in Okinawa together with their entire table of allowance from Saudi Arabia and a second directly from Port Hueneme. Collectively, work commenced on clearing roads and clogged drainage channels, repairing downed electrical lines and restoring power, and addressing shortages in food and potable water.
The scene upon arriving in the area of operations and the working conditions made lasting impressions on the Seabees involved. EOC Jerry H. Luzadder, part of an advanced transportation and water well team from NMCB 4 remembered how “there was still ash in the air with rain and lighting,” adding that “as we flew into Cubi Point it looked from the air as if it had snowed in the Philippines.” The members of NMCB 4 stayed in George Dewey High School at Subic Bay, “in the classrooms with cots and ash flowing underneath them,” writes CE1 Richard T. Landon, himself tasked with restoring base power. Over at Cubi Point, UTCS David J. Crowell of NMCB 4 stayed in the barracks, where “everything was grey, dark grey, and black with the air full of ash particles. There was grit in everything!”
Collective Seabee experiences, from Alaska to the deserts of Saudi Arabia proved useful in the clean-up effort. The ash, recalls Landon, was granular, white-grey in color, and created a powdery dust which proved hazardous to work in. Thanks to almost constant rain, the ash formed a sort of concrete slurry. “It was a hard to gather up because it would move ahead of our loader buckets like a wave of the ocean,” recalls Luzadder, but he explained that the men used a technique from Adak, AK for snow removal. By forming a berm of ash to one side of the runway, then picking it up or pushing it to the end, the equipment operators could quickly clear the runways for air traffic. The ash would then be dumped at the end of the runway, assorted collection sites, or in the ocean itself. The fine ash and grit, much like the desert sand NMCB 4 experienced in Operation Desert Shield/Storm, clogged machinery and air filters, air conditioners, forcing anything with a motor to be checked constantly for wear and breakdowns. To restore the base power, Landon and the other construction electricians either climbed poles or used bucket trucks to clean the conductive ash off every single line and insulator before the power grid could be restored.
The Naval Magazines (NAVMAG) at Subic Bay and Cubi Point each suffered extensive damage. With approximately eight inches of wet ash exerting a force of 62.7 pounds per square foot, the volcanic tephra collapsed pre-engineered buildings and damaged the roofs of permanent structures. To remove the munitions, the Seabees literally had to cut corners. Remembers Crowell: “We were cutting down buildings in the magazine area mostly by hand, using torches and hand tools and a track front end loader with a clam shell bucket to tear off building chunks in the pouring rain. Under our feet were missiles and ammunition of all types and we wondered if we were going to blow ourselves up trying to get to them. Eventually, we just forgot all about what was under us and pulled the magazine area apart so that weapons personnel could move the weapons to new locations.” And, if the risk of accidental detonation was not enough fun, Landon and Luzadder not so fondly remember that the monkeys by the NAVMAGs would attack people for food by the galley. “They would take over your vehicle,” notes Landon, and “You had to throw fruit in the opposite direction to get back to your vehicle.”
Monkeys, munitions, and ash aside, the enormity of the task required a greater force. As the number of Seabees increased in July, so did the need for command and control. A Naval Construction Force under the command of NMCB 4’s commanding officer, Commander James Corbett, stood up to oversee the Seabee force of 540 men and women from the battalions, CBMU, Public Works, and MUSE. Working six days a week and 11 hour days, by September 1991 the “ash kickers” had moved 125,070 cubic yards of ash from the Cubi Point airfield, hospital, and magazine alone, totaling over 110,000 tons of material. By the completion of the ash clearing work at Cubi in early October, this figure stood at over 251,000 tons of ash removed from over 50 miles of paved surfaces. Under Corbett, the assembled force also demolished 33 buildings damaged or destroyed by the falling ash, finished construction on a refueler maintenance building, and constructed 25 K-span structures to replace some of those lost. Four members of NMCB 5 flew in to Subic from Port Hueneme, CA to train a select crew from NMCB 3 and 4 in construction of the K-spans, sharing a wealth of knowledge accrued over months of work with the structures after a deployment in Saudi Arabia in support of Operation Desert Shield/Storm.
Even before the one-two devastation wrought by a volcano and a typhoon, the fate of Clark, Subic Bay, and Cubi Point lay in the hands of American and Philippine negotiators. Commencing in Fall 1990 and continuing until Pinatubo’s eruption, both governments met and attempted to negotiate a new ten-year lease for the Air Force and Navy installations to replace an agreement expiring in mid-September 1991. With Clark buried under ash and lahars and repairs estimated at upwards of $800 million, on July 17th a joint U.S. – Philippine announcement declared plans to close the air base but extend the American lease on Subic Bay and Cubi Point for a decade. In September, however, the Philippine Senate voted against the new American lease. In December, the Philippine government ordered the U.S. to withdraw by the end of 1992.
With the end of America’s military presence in the Philippines all but foretold, the Seabee rebuilding effort at Subic Bay and Cubi Point ended in December 1991. Nevertheless, the Seabees were not quite ready to leave Cubi Point without commemorating another monumental operation to move mountains, albeit of ash. At a park aptly named Seabee Point overlooking the South China Sea, Commander Corbett and other Seabee dignitaries unveiled a monument to the collective clean-up effort. The plaque read: “SEABEE POINT – Dedicated to the ‘Ash kick’n’ Seabees of the Naval Construction Force for their relentless dedication to Mount Pinatubo Disaster Recovery ‘Operation Phoenix’ June – October 1991.” Having moved half a mountain to construct Cubi Point, it was only fitting for the Seabees to erect new structures, literally from the ashes. When the U.S. formally turned over the naval installations at Subic Bay and Cubi Point to the Philippines on November 24, 1992, the Seabees brought the plaque back to Port Hueneme, a tribute to all those who moved mountains and pushed aside a volcano.
U.S. Navy Seabee Museum 
WOW!!! What a great story of hard work and the “Can Do” Seabees!!! GO NAVY!!!
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