TODAY, when Marie Therese Necio-Ortega takes out her gratitude journal?actually a high-tech personal digital assistant everyone else in Hong Kong has?she is likely to jot down ?Thank you for being alive? and mean it more than she would any other day.

It is, after all, the 16th anniversary of the day she thought she would die.

The contents of Ortega?s gratitude journal range from her appreciation of a ?great sunny day? to a ?great walk around Hong Kong? and to ?seeing a child?s beautiful smile,? from thanking God for her ?not getting washed up on that boat? to ?being physically whole.?

Having been spared from death, Ortega strives to live every day as if it were her last, knowing fully well the void that losing people creates.

In the fast-paced, forward-looking world of Hong Kong where Ortega now works as communications and promotions manager for the Peninsula Hotels, memories of the 1990 earthquake that buried her friends and guests at the Hyatt Terraces Hotel in Baguio City have not left her.

Ortega can still rattle off every detail, every name like they were part of her day?s agenda. In a phone interview with the Inquirer squeezed in between a lunch meeting and a conference call to London, she easily recalls those near-death moments.

12 people gone in 2 minutes

?I remember very clearly... All the people I left in that room died,? she says. Twelve colleagues gone in two minutes.

It was around 4 p.m., July 16, 1990. The then 27-year-old Necio, then with the press relations office of the Hyatt Terraces, had called a meeting with the hotel?s banquets and food and beverage (F&B) officers at the executive office on the second floor. They were preparing for the 10th anniversary of the casino, and people were very busy. So busy, they had to move the meeting to 4:30 p.m.

Richie Tomada, the banquet manager, jokingly shooed Ortega away, insisting she go ahead to the casino manager?s office on the third floor. She obliged, not knowing Tomada?s suggestion would save her life.

?I even teased her that perhaps they wanted me out of the room so they could all talk about me,? she says, laughing almost painfully at the recollection.

Under narra table

Nobody had a chance to talk for long. A magnitude 7.8 quake shook and twisted the whole building. Seconds before the hotel crashed, casino manager Agapito Valencia shoved Ortega under a narra table. The space could only fit one. The table withstood the beams that collapsed.

From the third floor, Ortega crashed to the ground floor mezzanine. She spent two hours pinned down by the rubble, with only her face showing.

?I knew I was going to die. I knew it when I saw my whole life flashed before me. I saw my graduation pictures from St. Theresa?s College, and then from UP I was praying and ready to die,? she says.

Valencia, who was found by rescuers first, asked people to look for Ortega. When they saw her condition, they had to find the smallest engineer to get into the crack and pull her out. The guy was Tony Nab-Ali, a 4?9? engineer of Igorot descent. He wrenched Ortega out of the rubble.

The first thing Nab-Ali asked Ortega was whether he should look for her legs, which he assumed had been cut by the impact.

A rag doll

?I was carried like a rag doll,? the 5?4? Ortega recalls. Miraculously, she suffered no cuts but was literally black all over with bruises.

Ortega was brought to the Ifugao garden beside the hotel car park where her secretary, Bing Torres, massaged her legs until they started feeling a tingling sensation. In less than an hour, Ortega was back on her feet and, being one of the few hotel managers who had survived, was tasked to oversee the recovery operations and handle the media.

The quake had cut off Baguio from the rest of the province, and rescue and treatment were very difficult. At 7 p.m., she had to call a doctor to operate on a guest whose eyeballs had popped out.

Hotel toll: 98 dead

The emergency surgery was done on top of a van, the only light source coming from the headlight of another car.

After two weeks of search, Hyatt closed its casualty count at 98 employees and guests dead. They were among the more than 1,000 people who died in Luzon as a result of the quake.

?I have many people to thank, that?s why I?m willing to do this,? Ortega says of the interview. She has barely spoken about the incident to her colleagues even after 16 years.

?I want to share with everybody that in times of crisis, some people can be so selfless they would think of you first. And I should also be willing to do that for others,? she says.

?If you didn?t do what you had to do, there?s no closure. But if you did your best ... it will not haunt you,? she says.

Ortega has since moved on, ending a 12-year stint with the Hyatt Hotel in 2000 to work with JW Marriot. Two weeks ago, she joined The Peninsula Hotels. She married her boyfriend from the 1990s, Joey Ortega, and they now have a daughter. At 12, she is well aware of the miracle that saved her mother.

Ortega has supervised recovery operations and press relations for different disasters, like the fire at the Hyatt Hotel in Manila, an earthquake in Japan, a super typhoon in Guam. Having survived one disaster herself, she has found handling similar situations second nature to her.

Wherever she goes, Ortega does not fail to go to church on Sundays, as she will do today. Even now, she prays for the 12 people she had left in that executive room in the decimated Hyatt Terraces of Baguio.

?It?s part of my journey in life,? she says.

Dreams of Vincent

For a while, she had recurrent dreams of one of her friends who died in the quake. Hyatt assistant F&B manager Vincent Rodriguez would pop in at the door and ask her to have lunch, as he always did when he was alive and they were both working for Hyatt. Then, she often declined, citing all the work she had to finish.

Surviving the earthquake has given the workaholic Ortega a stronger sense of purpose and balance. She now pauses to appreciate the little things people take for granted. It has also made her more grateful.

For better world

?I try to make sure things are done, even in ending an argument with people you love or finding a conclusion to something,? she says. ?If I?ve annoyed somebody in doing my job, which can?t be avoided, I try to make amends before the day ends.?

She is a lector for St. Joseph?s church in Hong Kong and does volunteer work for the Philippine consulate, helping in outreach programs for domestic helpers, counseling, teaching them small skills. She was also a volunteer for the overseas absentee voting.

?Time is the most valuable asset I have and the most little I can share... so I try to do things that make me or the community whole,? she says. ?I always feel that if you can convince others to do more, the world will be a better place.?