earthquake, which registered a 7.8 on the surface wave magnitude scale, at roughly 3 pm on July 16, 1990. It leveled some buildings, most notably the Christian College of the Philippines (Liwag Colleges) in the midst of class time, and killed 1,653 people. Around 154 people were said to be killed inside the CCP building. Unlike in Baguio, local and international journalists were able to arrive at Cabanatuan City hours after the tremor, and media coverage of the quake in its immediate aftermath centered on the collapsed school, where rescue efforts were hampered by the lack of heavy equipment to cut through the steel reinforcement of fallen concrete. Geography Cabanatuan City is located in the rolling central plains of Luzon drained by the Pampanga River. The city stands southwest of the provincial capital Palayan City and north of Manila. It is bordered by Santa Rosa to the south, Talavera and Gen. Mamerto Natividad to the north, Palayan to the north east, Laur to the east, and Aliaga to the west. Climate and Natural Disasters Cabanatuan has a tropical wet and dry climate (Köppen climate classification: Aw), with year-round warm weather and distinct dry and wet seasons. It is touted as one of the hottest cities in the country; in the summer season of 2011 Cabanatuan reached its hottest temperature at 39.8 °C, also the hottest in the Philippines in that same year, and on June 4, 2015 PAGASA reported a heat index for the city, which is the hottest yet recorded. According to the fifth Annual Natural Hazards Risk Atlas (NHRA) report in 2015, Cabanatuan City was ranked as the sixth city in the Philippines with extreme exposure to a myriad of natural hazards, especially typhoons and flooding. Notable disasters have struck Cabanatuan City in the past decades, including the 1990 Luzon earthquake, 2013 Typhoon Santi, and 2015 Typhoon Lando. The 2013 Typhoon Santi brought extreme winds measuring up to 120 km/h, causing widespread infrastructure damages and power loss to the city. Later in 2015, Typhoon Lando caused massive damage in the form of severe flooding in Central Luzon, including Cabanatuan City. The city experienced severe flooding, which hampered the operations of many establishments. Most roads going to the major districts of Cabanatuan were not passable to light vehicles for two to three days after the storm. Recently in 2022, Typhoon Karding damaged numerous establishments, farmlands, and electric lines in