A magnitude-6.9 earthquake struck Cebu province late Tuesday, killing at least 69 people. Image credit: Info Room/X
(The Post News) – More than 60 people were confirmed dead in a powerful earthquake that hit a central Philippine province on Tuesday night. Officials have confirmed that at least 69 people have been killed and almost 150 injured after a powerful magnitude-6.9 earthquake struck off the coast of the central Philippine Island province of Cebu.
An unspecified number of residents have been trapped in collapsed houses, nightclubs and other businesses in the hard-hit city of Bogo and outlying rural towns. Rescuers scrambled to find survivors Wednesday. However, Army troops, police and civilian volunteers backed by backhoes and sniffer dogs were deployed Wednesday to carry out house-to-house searches for survivors.
According to the officials, the epicenter of the earthquake, which was set off by movement in an undersea fault line at a dangerously shallow depth of 5 kilometers (3 miles), was about 19 kilometers (12 miles) northeast of Bogo, a coastal city of about 90,000 people in Cebu province where about half of the deaths were reported.
The officials said the death toll in Bogo was expected to rise, intermittent rain and damaged bridges and roads were hampering the race to save lives. Office of Civil Defense deputy administrator Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro IV in a news briefing said there were still many reports of people who were pinned or hit by debris.
Alejandro said the Philippine government was considering whether to seek help from foreign governments based on an ongoing rapid damage assessment. Workers were trying to transport a backhoe to hasten search and rescue efforts in a cluster of shanties in a mountain village hit by a landslide and boulders, Bogo city disaster-mitigation officer Rex Ygot told The Associated Press early Wednesday.
Deaths also were reported from the outlying towns of Medellin and San Remigio, where three coast guard personnel, a firefighter and a child were killed separately by collapsing walls and falling debris while trying to flee to safety from a basketball game in a sports complex that was disrupted by the quake, town officials said.
The earthquake was one of the most powerful to batter the central region in more than a decade and it struck while many people slept or were at home. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology issued a tsunami warning and advised people to stay away from the coastlines of Cebu and the nearby provinces of Leyte and Biliran due to possible waves of up to 1 meter (3 feet).
Cebu and other provinces were still recovering from a tropical storm that battered the central region on Friday, leaving at least 27 people dead mostly due to drownings and falling trees, knocking out power in entire cities and towns and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.
Schools and government offices were closed in the quake-hit cities and towns while the safety of buildings were checked. More than 600 aftershocks have been detected after Tuesday night’s temblor, Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology director Teresito Bacolcol said.
The Philippines, one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, is often hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of seismic faults around the ocean. The archipelago is also lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms each year.
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