A powerful earthquake struck the southern Philippines yesterday, crushing two people under debris, cracking buildings and injuring dozens in a region still reeling from a previous deadly tremor.
Terrified locals ran into the streets after the shallow quake, which hit the island of Mindanao as schools and offices opened for the day.
The shaking lasted up to a minute in some areas, damaging homes, multistory buildings and classrooms in a region where hundreds are still displaced by a quake that killed at least five earlier this month.
The Philippines suffers regular tremors as part of the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of intense seismic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
A teenage boy was crushed by a falling wall as he tried to escape his school in Magsaysay, the town spokesman told reporters.
Though other students were injured in “stampede” to escape the building, they survived.
A collapsing wall in another town, Koronadal, killed a 66-year-old man, local authorities told reporters.
At least 50 people were hurt by falling debris, including about seven students and teachers hurt escaping their collapsed elementary school.
Locals were awed by the power of the quake, which was shallow and thus potentially more destructive.
“Buildings were not just moving, they were swaying,” Gadi Sorilla, a doctor at a hospital in Tulunan, a town about 25km from the epicenter, told reporters.
“I asked God for help,” he said, adding that the hospital had quickly received about 10 patients, some with head injuries.
Tulunan Mayor Reuel Limbungan said the local municipal hall had been heavily damaged and authorities had received “lots of reports of injuries.”
Rescue teams have begun fanning out to assess the damage to the region, where electricity and telephone services were knocked out by the earthquake.
The US Geological Survey said the initial magnitude 6.6 earthquake was followed by a number of smaller shakes, including one measuring magnitude 5.8.
The continuing tremors were causing anxiety on the ground, with people refusing to go back inside buildings for fear of being caught in any resulting collapse.
Schools across the area have been shuttered as a precaution.
The area is still suffering the effects of a magnitude 6.4 earthquake that hit less than two weeks ago, killing at least five people and damaging dozens of buildings.
Residents fled homes across the Mindanao region and a mall caught fire in the city of General Santos shortly after the quake struck on Oct. 16.
“We still have 570 individuals in evacuation centers [from the previous quake] and with this quake, we are expecting more evacuees,” said Zaldy Ortiz, an officer with a local emergency rescue team.
One of the deadliest earthquakes to hit the Philippines recently was in April, causing the collapse of a building near the capital, Manila.
At least 16 people were killed when the building pancaked in the worst-hit Pampanga province.
High-rise structures in the capital swayed after the April quake, leaving some with large cracks in their walls.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS