[kellyhound]

A 6.9-magnitude quake has struck off the the central Philippines coast, damaging buildings and roads and knocking out power in parts of the region, as rescuers searched for casualties.

Municipal workers checked a collapsed public building and a gym, both in the north of the island of Cebu, hours after the quake struck at sea off its northern tip at 9:59pm (1359 GMT), said Wilson Ramos, a provincial rescue official.

“There could be people trapped beneath collapsed buildings,” he said, adding that rescue efforts were under way in the town of San Remigio and in Bogo, a city near the centre of the quake with 90,000 residents. He said he did not know how many people were missing.

Recovery efforts were being hampered by the dark as well as aftershocks, he said. The US Geological Service has recorded four quakes of magnitude 5.0 or higher in the area since the first tremor.

The local seismology office warned of a possible “minor sea-level disturbance” and urged residents of the central islands of Leyte, Cebu and Biliran to “stay away from the beach and not to go to the coast”.

A Cebu firefighter, Joey Leeguid, speaking from San Fernando town, said: “We felt the shake here in our station, it was so strong. We saw our locker moving from left to right, we felt slightly dizzy for a while but we are all fine now.”

Martham Pacilan, 25, who lives in the resort town of Bantayan, also near the quake centre, said he was at the town square near a church, which had been damaged.

“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 said. “I was in shock and in panic at the same time but my body couldn’t move, I was just there waiting for the shake to stop.”

The Cebu provincial government reported a commercial building and a school in Bantayan had collapsed, while a number of village roads had sustained damage.

The quake caused power lines to trip, leading to outages across Cebu and nearby central islands, the Phillipines National Grid said, adding it was assessing the extent of the damage.

The Cebu provincial governor, Pamela Baricuatro, urged residents in a live video message on her official Facebook account to “stay calm and move to open areas; keep away from walls or structures that may collapse and stay alert for aftershocks”.

She said the provincial government was assessing the situation and contacting municipal officials.

The US Geological Service had reported a magnitude reading of 7.0, before revising it down, while the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was no tsunami threat.

Quakes are a near-daily occurrence in the Philippines, which is situated on the Pacific “ring of fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through south-east Asia and across the Pacific basin. Most are too weak to be felt by humans, but strong and destructive ones come at random.

[kellyhound]

At least 69 people have been confirmed killed and almost 150 injured after a powerful magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck off the coast of the central Philippine island province of Cebu, according to officials.

The United States Geological Survey said the earthquake struck at 9:59pm local time on Tuesday (13:59 GMT) off Cebu Island’s northern tip near Bogo, a city of some 90,000 residents, and was followed by four earthquakes of magnitude 5 or higher in the area after the first tremor.

The new death toll confirmed on Wednesday is a sharp increase on the 26 people reported killed earlier by the country’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council and is expected to rise further.

Rescuers scrambled to find survivors. Army troops, police and civilian volunteers backed by backhoes and sniffer dogs were deployed to carry out house-to-house searches for survivors.

“We’re still in the golden hour of our search and rescue,” Office of Civil Defense 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.”

Local authorities have declared a “state of calamity” in parts of Cebu, according to local news outlets.

[bigbear8]

See! The believers amongst us are all the same. Almost everyone in these videos invoked God's protection, just like the Muslims praise Allah all the time.

[kellyhound]

The earthquake killed at least 79 people and injured 1,271 others. A total of nearly 152,000 homes and ₱16.23 billion (US$329.62 million) worth of infrastructure and other items were damaged.

Over 7,400 houses collapsed, along with numerous buildings, including churches and hospitals, with damage occurring as far away as Cebu City.

Tsunami advisories were triggered, widespread power outages occurred and landslides caused damage.