Philippines Earthquake 6.9 Magnitude Kills at Least 31 in Central Region

Philippines Earthquake: At least 69 people were killed in a powerful earthquake that hit a central Philippine province, where dozens of people were killed by a powerful earthquake Tuesday night.

The magnitude-6.9 earthquake that hit at about 10 p.m. trapped an unspecified number of residents in collapsed houses, nightclubs and other businesses in the hard-hit city of Bogo and outlying rural towns in Cebu province, officials said.

Rescuers scrambled to find survivors. Army troops, police and civilian volunteers backed by backhoes and sniffer dogs were deployed to carry out house-to-house searches for survivors.

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“We’re still in the golden hour of our search and rescue,” Office of Civil Defense deputy administrator Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro IV said in a news briefing. “There are still many reports of people who were pinned or hit by debris.”

“We are still assessing the damage,” Pamela Baricuatro, the governor of Cebu, said in a video posted on social media.

“But it could be worse than we think,” Baricuatro said, adding that she has been in touch with the president’s office and is asking for aid.

“We’re sending a trauma team already there. Doctors and nurses are on the way,” the governor told the DZMM radio station. “We need medicine, food, and medical teams.”

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The epicentre 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 kilometres (12 miles) northeast of Bogo, a coastal city of about 90,000 people in Cebu province where about half of the deaths were reported, 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 urged residents in the provinces of Cebu, Leyte and Biliran to stay away from the coast due to a “minor sea level disturbance”, and to “be on alert for unusual waves”.

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