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03-10-2025
MANILA: Dozens have been killed in a magnitude 6.9 earthquake that struck off the coast of the central Philippines, sending people running onto the streets and knocking power out in some areas.
Local officials told media early on Wednesday that 19 people were confirmed killed, including 13 people who died in Bogo city, located near the northern tip of Cebu Island and the epicentre of the earthquake, which struck off the coast late on Tuesday.
One other person was killed in the Cebu town of Tabuelan, according to a local official, in addition to five deaths that rescuers had earlier reported in the town of San Remigio, located further to the north.
The Reuters news agency said the death toll had reached 22, citing a report by local radio station DZMM.
“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.
Baricuatro later said that an unspecified number of houses and a hospital were damaged and emergency medical teams were being deployed to treat residents who were pinned down and injured.
The extent of the damage and injuries would not be known until daytime, she said.
“We’re sending already a trauma team there. Doctors and nurses are on the way,” the governor told DZMM. “We need medicine, food, medical teams.”
The United States Geological Service recorded four earthquakes of magnitude 5 or higher in the area after the first tremor.
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology has urged residents in the provinces of Cebu, Leyte and Biliran to stay away from the coast due to a “minor sea level disturbance”, and told them to “be on alert for unusual waves”.
The Cebu provincial government also reported that a commercial building and a school in Bantayan had collapsed, while a number of village roads also sustained damage.
“There could be people trapped beneath collapsed buildings,” provincial rescue official Wilson Ramos told media, adding that he did not know how many people were missing.
‘Shock and panic’
Cebu firefighter Joey Leeguid, from the town of San Fernando, told media that he felt the quake at his fire station.
“We saw our locker moving from left to right. We felt slightly dizzy for a while, but we are all fine now,” Leeguid said.
Martham Pacilan, a 25-year-old resident of the resort town of Bantayan near the epicentre, said he was at the town square near a church when the quake struck.
“I heard a loud booming noise from the direction of the church. Then I saw rocks falling from the structure. Luckily, no one got hurt,” he told media.
“I was in shock and in panic at the same time, but my body couldn’t move. I was just there, waiting for the shaking to stop.”
The Archdiocesan Shrine of Santa Rosa de Lima, a church in Daanbantayan, a town in Cebu province, said the structure had partially collapsed. Power also went out in the town.
The Philippines experiences near-daily earthquakes. A powerful magnitude 7 quake in July 2022 killed at least five people and injured 60.
In December 2023, another large earthquake shook the southern Philippines, killing at least one person and forcing thousands to evacuate. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
