People were crying as they ran

She ran down from the 17th storey after she felt the hotel in Cebu city swaying.

Singaporean accounts manager Pauline Tan was in a meeting room at the Radisson Blu Hotel Cebu , getting ready for a business conference with her Singaporean colleagues, when the earthquake struck just after 8am on Tuesday.

Realising that the shaking she felt was not a figment of her imagination but a tremor, Ms Tan and her Singaporean colleagues at the conference ran down the stairs to get out of the hotel.

Ms Tan, 40, said: "It was scary to see shoes being left at the side of the stairs as everyone tried to rush out of the hotel. "We were literally running for our lives."

Ms Tan was one of several people The New Paper spoke to at Changi Airport when they returned from Cebu yesterday.

Malaysian designer Aggy Lim, 28, said she was about to pour herself a cup of coffee at the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel when she felt the floor shaking beneath her.

When she felt it again, she realised the situation was serious.

[[nid:50981]]

Panic

"People were starting to run and I began to panic. There is a saying 'when someone runs, the rest just follow' and that is exactly what I did."

Ms Lim, who was on a four-day holiday in Cebu with her friend, said there was complete chaos as everyone was run for their lives.

She said there were people crying as they ran, some even tripping over their feet as others pushed from the back.

Buildings, such as departmental stores and houses, swayed as the tremors shook the ground but she did not see any collapsing, said Ms Lim.

The earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.2, struck the central Philippine island of Bohol on Tuesday at 8.12am.

Considering that Bohol was just 148km from Cebu city, the damage was limited.

Both Ms Tan and Ms Lim gathered at open fields outside their hotels after the initial shocks.

Ms Tan said hotel guests were provided meals despite the danger.

[[nid:50981]]

She said its employees also risked their lives by going inside the hotel to inspect the building.

Ms Lim, who stopped over in Singapore before flying off to Kuala Lumpur, said: "I became paranoid that the buildings could collapse any time on me."

"I can still feel the ground shaking now even when I'm already in Singapore." The guests at her hotel were also given food as they remained in the safety of a field.

Both women returned to their hotel rooms a few hours later to get their belongings to leave, but the flights out were sold out.

They had trouble sleeping that night as did many people in the area - some people even spent the night out in the open.

But they were glad to be finally out of the danger zone.

tnp@sph.com.sg

Get The New Paper for more stories.

[[nid:50981]]