The death toll from an earthquake in the central Philippines rose to 72, officials said yesterday, as the search for missing people wound down, and rescuers turned their focus to the hundreds injured and thousands left homeless.
The bodies of three people were pulled from the rubble of a collapsed hotel overnight in the city of Bogo, near the epicenter of the magnitude 6.9 quake that struck on Tuesday.
“We have zero missing, so the assumption is all are accounted for,” Philippine National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council spokesman Junie Castillo said, adding that some rescue units in Cebu province had been told to “demobilize.”
Photo: EPA
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr flew to Bogo with senior aides yesterday, pledging to put up a “tent city” to temporarily house those whose dwellings were among the 600 wrecked by the quake.
Also to be accommodated there would be the thousands more whose homes remained structurally intact, but who fear being caught up in the wave of aftershocks that still sweep the region.
The government said that 294 people were injured and about 20,000 had fled their homes across the north of Cebu.
Many were sleeping on the streets.
More than 110,000 people in 42 communities affected by the quake would need assistance to rebuild their homes and restore their livelihoods, the regional civil defense office said.
Marcos told reporters that the main impact of the quake had been to infrastructure, with officials unsure about the condition of evacuation centers, which meant “we don’t have anything to house the displaced families.”
“Our decision was to procure giant tents... We will build a tent city that can be put up swiftly and will shield people from rain,” he told reporters, pledging to supply it with food, water and electricity.
He also vowed to restore electricity to Bogo, a city of 90,000 people, by the end of the day and to provide a token worth 10,000 pesos (US$172) to each family that lost their home.
A tiny village chapel in Bogo was serving as a temporary shelter for 18-year-old Diane Madrigal and 14 of her neighbors after their houses were destroyed.
Their clothes and food were scattered across the chapel’s pews.
“The entire wall [of my house] fell, so I really don’t know how and when we can go back again,” Madrigal told reporters. “I am still scared of the aftershocks up to now, it feels like we have to run again.”
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