At least six dead as earthquake rocks Philippines
A powerful nighttime earthquake in the southern Philippines killed at least six people, injured more than one hundred twenty others, bruised buildings and an airport and knocked out power, officials said Saturday.
The late Friday quake with a magnitude of 6.Five roused residents from sleep in Surigao del Norte province, sending hundreds to flee their homes. The quake was centered about fourteen kilometres (8 miles) northwest of the provincial capital of Surigao at a relatively shallow depth of eleven kilometres (6.8 miles), said Renato Solidum of the Philippine Institute of Seismology and Volcanology.
Almost one hundred aftershocks have been felt, officials said, adding that schools were being reopened as evacuation centers for residents wary of returning to their bruised homes.
S olidum said the quake was set off by movement in the Philippine fault, which sits in the Pacific “Ring of Fire” where quakes and volcanoes are common.
At least four people were killed, some after being hit by falling debris and blunt objects, provincial disaster-response official Gilbert Gonzales said, correcting an earlier report by a regional hospital, which reported fifteen residents who were rushed in with injuries as dead. At least one hundred twenty six others were injured in Surigao city, about seven hundred kilometres (430 miles) southeast of Manila.
“We’re still doing a rapid needs and harm assessment,” Office of Civil Defence director Antonio Gonzales told The Associated Press by telephone.
S everal mostly low-slung buildings and schools sustained cracks in the coastal city and a bridge collapsed in an outlying town. Rescue teams were checking for possible casualties in a village called Poknoy in the city of 140,500 people, he said.
The city’s airport was temporarily closed due to cracks in the runway, aviation officials said. A major port in Lipata district also was closed while engineers checked the stability of an access road, Gonzales said.
“The wiggling was so strong I could hardly stand,” coast guard personnel Rayner Neil Elopre said.
V illage leaders asked residents to budge to a school building on higher ground, Elopre said, pausing shortly during a mild aftershock while talking on the phone.
Police officer Jimmy Sarael said he, his wifey and two children embraced each other until the wiggling eased. They later moved to the moonlit grounds outside the provincial capitol elaborate to join more than 1,000 jittery residents, he said.
The last major earthquake that struck Surigao, an impoverished region also dealing with a communist insurgency, was in the 1800s, Solidum said. A magnitude 7.7 quake killed almost Two,000 people on the northern island of Luzon in 1990.
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