Manila, Philippines – At least 69 people were killed in a mighty earthquake that hit a central Filipino province on Tuesday evening.
The quake of size 6.9 hit at 10 p.m. and was missing an unspecified number of residents in collapsed houses, night clubs and other companies in the persistent coastal city of Bogo and in rural city cities in the province of Cebu, said civil servants.
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The rescuers searched for survivors on Wednesday. Army forces, police and civilian volunteers who were supported by excavator shops and sniffer dogs were used to carry out house-to-house search for survivors.
Bogo is a city with around 90,000 people. Officials said about half of the deaths were reported there.
According to officials, the number of fatalities in Bogo was expected to say, temporary rain and damaged bridges and streets hinder the race to save lives.
“We are still in the golden hour of our search and rescue,” said Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro, deputy administrator of the civil defense, in a news information. “There are still many reports about people who have been captured or hit by ruins.”
The Filipino government is considering whether foreign governments are supposed to seek help based on a continuing quick damage assessment, said Alejandro.
The workers tried to transport an excavator to accelerate the search and rescue efforts in a group of shanties in a mountain birgic village hit by landslide and boulders, Rex Ygot, disaster officer from Bogo City, told the Associated Press early Wednesday.
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“It is difficult to move in the area because there are dangers,” said Glenn Ursal, another disaster officer who was added that some survivors were taken to a hospital from the mountain village.
The deaths were also reported from the remote cities of Medellin and San Remigio, in which three employees of the coast guard, a firefighter and a child were killed by collapse of walls and falling rubble, while they tried to go to safety in a basketball game in a sports complex that was disturbed by the quake.
The quake was one of the most powerful in more than a decade to beat the central region and hit while many people slept or were at home.
The Filipino Institute for Volcanology and Seismology briefly published a tsunami warning and advised people to keep away from the coasts of Cebu and the nearby provinces of Leyte and Biliran due to possible waves of up to 3 feet.
No such waves were reported and the Tsunami warning was lifted more than three hours later, but thousands of traumatized residents refused to return home, and decided to stay overnight in open grass fields and parks despite intermittent rain.
Cebu and other provinces still recovered from a tropical storm that took the central region on Friday, killing at least 27 people, mainly from drowning and falling trees, pounding in entire cities and forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.
Schools and government offices were closed in the bent cities and cities, while the safety of the buildings was checked. After the Shaker on Tuesday evening, more than 600 aftershocks were found, said Teresito Bacolcol, director of the Filipino Institute for Volcanology and Seismology.
Rain-soaked mountains were more susceptible to land and mudslides in a large earthquake, he warned.
“It was really traumatic for people. They were whipped by a storm, which was then torn by an earthquake,” said Bacolcol. “I don’t want to experience what you went through.”
The Philippines, one of the most catastrophic countries in the world, are hit due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc seismic mistake around the ocean, often by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The archipelago is also whipped every year by around 20 types of typhoons and storms.
