4 hours ago
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A 6.9-magnitude quake has struck off the the central Philippines coast, damaging buildings and roads and knocking out power in parts of the region, as rescuers searched for casualties.
Municipal workers checked a collapsed public building and a gym, both in the north of the island of Cebu, hours after the quake struck at sea off its northern tip at 9:59pm (1359 GMT), said Wilson Ramos, a provincial rescue official.
“There could be people trapped beneath collapsed buildings,” he said, adding that rescue efforts were under way in the town of San Remigio and in Bogo, a city near the centre of the quake with 90,000 residents. He said he did not know how many people were missing.
Recovery efforts were being hampered by the dark as well as aftershocks, he said. The US Geological Service has recorded four quakes of magnitude 5.0 or higher in the area since the first tremor.
The local seismology office warned of a possible “minor sea-level disturbance” and urged residents of the central islands of Leyte, Cebu and Biliran to “stay away from the beach and not to go to the coast”.
A Cebu firefighter, Joey Leeguid, speaking from San Fernando town, said: “We felt the shake here in our station, it was so strong. We saw our locker moving from left to right, we felt slightly dizzy for a while but we are all fine now.”
Martham Pacilan, 25, who lives in the resort town of Bantayan, also near the quake centre, said he was at the town square near a church, which had been damaged.
“I heard a loud booming noise from the direction of the church then I saw rocks falling from the structure. Luckily no one got hurt,” he said. “I was in shock and in panic at the same time but my body couldn’t move, I was just there waiting for the shake to stop.”
The Cebu provincial government reported a commercial building and a school in Bantayan had collapsed, while a number of village roads had sustained damage.
The quake caused power lines to trip, leading to outages across Cebu and nearby central islands, the Phillipines National Grid said, adding it was assessing the extent of the damage.
The Cebu provincial governor, Pamela Baricuatro, urged residents in a live video message on her official Facebook account to “stay calm and move to open areas; keep away from walls or structures that may collapse and stay alert for aftershocks”.
She said the provincial government was assessing the situation and contacting municipal officials.
The US Geological Service had reported a magnitude reading of 7.0, before revising it down, while the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was no tsunami threat.
Quakes are a near-daily occurrence in the Philippines, which is situated on the Pacific “ring of fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through south-east Asia and across the Pacific basin. Most are too weak to be felt by humans, but strong and destructive ones come at random.
