8 dead, 60 hurt as quakes shake Philippines

MANILA, Philippines — Two strong earthquakes hours apart struck a group of sparsely populated islands in the Luzon Strait in the northern Philippines early Saturday, killing at least eight people, injuring about 60 and damaging ancestral houses famous among tourists.

The quakes collapsed homes of stone and wood and roused residents from sleep, said Roldan Esdicul, who heads the Batanes provincial disaster-response office. Footage showed people clearing boulder-size stone bricks to pull out one body from the rubble.

“Our bed and everything were swaying from sideto-side like a hammock,” Esdicul told The Associated Press. “We all ran out to safety.”

On hard-hit Itbayat island, schoolteacher Agnes Salengua-nico said she and her husband woke up horrified with the ground shaking and a cabinet crashing to the floor. Their house withstood the shaking but others in the neighborhood crumbled, pinning residents inside, she said.

“We’re out now in the farm with our three pigs because we’re very, very scared of the aftershocks,” she said, her voice trembling shortly after the ground shook again.

More than 2,000 residents of Itbayat were advised not to return to their homes and stay in the town plaza as successive aftershocks shook the region, Esdicul said.

One villager remained missing in the quake’s aftermath, he said.

The quakes measured 5.4 and 5.9 at relatively shallow depths, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said. A third quake with a magnitude of 5.8 struck at sea west of Batanes later Saturday, it said.

Esdicul said he was already in his office when the second and more powerful quake struck about three hours after the first shock. “We have to hold on because you can’t stand or walk. It was that strong,” he said.

The initial quake severely cracked the bell tower of the island’s old limestone church, the 19th century Santa Maria de Mayan, a popular tourist attraction. The tower crumbled down when the second temblor hit the island, he said.