At least 69 people were killed in a powerful earthquake that hit a central Philippine province on Tuesday night.
The magnitude-6.9 earthquake trapped an unspecified number of residents in collapsed houses, nightclubs and other businesses in the hard-hit city of Bogo and outlying rural towns in Cebu province, officials said.
Rescuers scrambled to find survivors Wednesday. Army troops, police and civilian volunteers backed by backhoes and sniffer dogs were deployed on Wednesday to carry out house-to-house searches for survivors.
The death toll in Bogo was expected to rise, according to officials, who said intermitted rain and damaged bridges and roads were hampering the race to save lives.
“We’re still in the golden hour of our search and rescue,” Office of Civil Defence deputy administrator Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro IV said in a news briefing. “There are still many reports of people who were pinned or hit by debris.”
The Philippine government is considering whether to seek help from foreign governments based on an ongoing rapid damage assessment, Alejandro said.
Workers were trying to transport a backhoe to hasten search and rescue efforts in a cluster of shanties in a mountain village hit by a landslide and boulders, Bogo city disaster-mitigation officer Rex Ygot told The Associated Press.
People moving through the rubble after a powerful earthquake in the Philippines’ Cebu province. (Picture: Daniel Ceng/Getty Images)“It’s hard to move in the area because there are hazards,” said Glenn Ursal, another disaster-mitigation officer, who added that some survivors were brought to a hospital from the mountain village.
Deaths also were reported from the outlying towns of Medellin and San Remigio, where three coast guard personnel, a firefighter and a child were killed separately by collapsing walls and falling debris while trying to flee to safety from a basketball game in a sports complex that was disrupted by the quake, town officials said.
The earthquake was one of the most powerful to batter the central region in more than a decade, and it struck while many people slept or were at home.
Schools and government offices were closed in the quake-hit cities and towns while the safety of buildings were checked.
More than 600 aftershocks have been detected, Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology director Teresito Bacolcol said.
With AP
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