I was living in Angeles with my girlfriend (later to be my wife) at the time, having moved there from Manila to run a dating agency with another Brit.
We had to abandon our place and head back to Manila, later to return to the devastation and find that the roof had caved in and all our belongings had been looted or ruined.
There was quite a long lead-up to the final massive eruption because the volcanologists had been aware of trouble brewing of course.
I do remember that we'd been experiencing record high temps (even for the Phils) a few days before...around 38C.