MANILA (Parliament Politics Magazine) – In the northern Philippines, a powerful earthquake caused the death of at least two people and about a dozen of injuries. The earthquake also caused small landslides, wrecked churches and buildings, and frightened many in the capital and hospital patients to flee outside.
According to Renato Solidum, the chief of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, the 7-magnitude earthquake had its centre in the mountainous region in the province of Abra.
The lights went out in an instant, and the ground rocked like he was on a swing, Michael Brillantes, a safety officer of the Abra town of Lagangilang, near the epicentre with the Philippines, said. They hurried out of the office and he heard screaming and some of his companions were in tears.
Brillantes told the Associated Press over his cell phone, it was the most intense quake he had felt and he believed the ground would open up.
In Abra, where at least 25 other people were hurt, most of whom were hospitalised, a villager was killed after he was struck by collapsing cement slabs inside his home, according to officials.
In the town of La Trinidad where strawberries grow the most in the Benguet province, where several routes were blocked by landslides and rocks, a construction worker was struck by rubble and killed. According to officials, five persons were hurt when their SUV and a truck were pounded by boulders and other debris on a mountain road in the Mountain region close to Benguet.
Many homes and structures had weakened walls, including some in Abra, where the recently-elected president Ferdinand Marcos Jr. intended to visit the victims and local officials.
Abra’s small, three-story building, which is precariously falling toward a road that is littered with debris, was depicted in a Red Cross photo. Parts of an old stone church tower were seen being ripped off and tumbling in a cloud of dust on a hilltop in a panicked witness’ video.
At least two hospitals in Manila, roughly 300 kilometres (200 miles) south of Lagangilang, had patients in wheelchairs and medical staff evacuated; however, engineers later discovered only a few small fractures in the walls, and they were instructed to return.
After analysing further, the earthquake’s magnitude was reduced from its initial 7.3 magnitude. The institute stated the quake was caused by activity in a small local fault at a depth of 25km (15 miles), and it added that it anticipated damage and several aftershocks.
The earthquake’s strength was 7.0 and its depth was 10 kilometres (6 miles), according to the US Geological Survey. Shallower earthquakes typically do greater harm.
The Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a ring of faults around the Pacific Ocean where the majority of earthquakes in the world happen, runs along the Philippines. In addition, it experiences roughly 20 typhoons and tropical storms each year, making it one of the nations most vulnerable to natural disasters.
Nearly 2,000 people were killed in the northern Philippines in 1990 by a magnitude 7.7 earthquake.
