“What I heard behind me sounded like an aeroplane landing. The sound was unlike anything normal. When I looked at my side mirror and then turned around, what I saw were pylons falling and power lines sparking,” Bernardo told This Week in Asia.

In just seconds, the structure had morphed into a twisted heap on the ground amid a dust cloud. Thankfully, it was 3am on a Sunday morning, so there were fewer people in the area.

“I moved away immediately and sped up on my motorcycle because I was afraid of getting hit by the electrical wires,” Bernardo said.

After a gruelling two-day rescue operation for 16 missing people, most of them construction workers, officials in the city about 80km northwest of Manila announced they were ending search missions and shifting to retrieval operations after detecting no further signs of life.

Four people have been confirmed dead, including a Malaysian man and two construction workers, whose bodies were retrieved from the rubble.