Six killed in southern Philippines earthquake

Magnitude 6.7 quake injures 120 as hundreds flee

SURIGAO, PHILIPPINES // Six people were killed and more than 120 injured by a powerful earthquake in the southern Philippines. The magnitude- 6.7 quake woke residents from their sleep 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 makeshift centres accommodated weary residents.

Provincial information officer Mary Jul Escalante was being interviewed by a television 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, said provincial disaster- response official Gilbert Gonzales.

At least 126 others were injured in Surigao, where the earthquake knocked out power and forced the closure of the domestic airport because of deep cracks in its runway.

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

Surigao was placed under a state of calamity to allow faster release of emergency funds, provincial police chief senior superintendent Anthony Maghari said. TV broadcasts 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 facades of buildings were heavily cracked, their windows shattered, with canopies and debris having fallen on to parked cars in the street below. The last major earthquake that struck Surigao, an impoverished region also dealing with a communist insurgency, was in 1879, Mr Solidum said.

A magnitude-7.7 quake killed nearly 2,000 people on the northern island of Luzon in 1990.

Amid the disaster, the military appealed to New People’s Army guerrillas not to disrupt rescue and rehabilitation work.

“We urge you not to attack our soldiers,” said spokesman Col Edgard Arevalo.

Falling debris and walls killed most of the victims