Six killed as strong quake strikes southern Philippines

Filipino villagers view a damaged bridge in the earthquake-hit city of Surigao. EPA/CERILO EBRANO

SURIGAO, Philippines // At least six people were killed and more than 120 injured by a powerful earthquake in the southern Philippines.

The magnitude 6.7 quake roused residents from their sleep late on Friday in Surigao del Norte province, forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes.

The epicentre was about 16 kilometres north-west of the provincial capital of Surigao at a relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometres, said Renato Solidum of the Philippine Institute of Seismology and Volcanology.

Rescue teams rushed to find survivors yesterday in damaged buildings and in nearby towns.

Nearly 100 aftershocks were recorded as evacuation centres accommodated wary residents.

Provincial information officer Mary Jul Escalante was being interviewed by ABS-CBN TV network when another aftershock struck. “Oh sir, there’s an aftershock,” she said. “I’m shaking, we have a phobia now.”

Most of the victims were killed after being struck by falling debris and concrete walls, provincial disaster-response official Gilbert Gonzales said. At least 126 others were injured in Surigao, where the quake knocked out power and forced the closure of the domestic airport due to deep cracks in its runway.

Several buildings, including a state college, a hotel and a shopping mall, were damaged in the city.

Surigao was placed under a state of calamity to allow faster release of emergency funds, provincial police chief Senior Superintendent Anthony Maghari said by phone.

TV footage showed army troops and other rescuers pulling out the body of a man from the concrete rubble of a damaged house while relatives wept. In Surigao’s central area, the facade of a number of buildings were heavily cracked, their glass windows shattered with canopies and debris falling on parked cars on the street below.

The last major earthquake that struck Surigao, an impoverished region also dealing with a communist insurgency, was in 1879, Solidum said. A magnitude 7.7 quake killed nearly 2,000 people on the northern island of Luzon in 1990.

Amid the calamity, the military appealed to New People’s Army guerrillas not to disrupt rescue and rehabilitation work. “We urge you not to attack our soldiers,” military spokesman Colonel Edgard Arevalo said.

*Associated Press