Strong quake strikes off Philippine coast Friday

MANILA, Philip­pines (AP) — A 7.6-magnitude earth­quake struck off the Philip­pines’ east­ern coast late Fri­day, killing one per­son in a house col­lapse, knock­ing out power in sev­eral towns and spurring panic about a tsunami that ended up gen­er­at­ing only tiny waves.

The quake set off car alarms, shook items off shelves and sent many coastal res­i­dents flee­ing for high ground before the Pacific Tsunami Warn­ing Cen­ter lifted all tsunami alerts it had issued for the Philip­pines and neigh­bor­ing coun­tries from Indone­sia to Japan, and for Pacific islands as far away as the North­ern Marianas.

“It was very strong. My house was mak­ing sounds,” Bem­ruel Noel, a mem­ber of the Philip­pine House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, said in a tele­phone inter­view from Tacloban city on the east­ern coast of Leyte island, where the quake set off a small stam­pede of residents.

“You talk to God with an earth­quake that strong,” he said.

Tacloban res­i­dent Digna Marco said the quake top­pled a fig­urine on top of her TV set and that her son had to hold their desk­top com­puter to pre­vent it from falling to the floor. The lights over her din­ing room were swing­ing, she said.

One house col­lapsed in south­ern Cagayan de Oro city, on the main south­ern island of Min­danao, killing a 54-year-old woman and injur­ing her 5-year-old grand­son, who was being treated in a hos­pi­tal, said the city’s mayor, Vicente Emano.

The quake gen­er­ated only very small tsunami waves of about 3 cen­time­ters (just over an inch) along the east­ern Philip­pine coast near Legazpi city and another nearby loca­tion, the Pacific Tsunami Warn­ing Cen­ter said.

Ini­tial tsunami warn­ings had prompted many res­i­dents to head inland.

“My neigh­bors and I have evac­u­ated. We are now on our way to the moun­tains,” fish­er­man Mar­lon Lagra­mado told The Asso­ci­ated Press before the warn­ings were lifted, in a tele­phone inter­view from the coastal town of Gui­wan in the Philip­pine province of East­ern Samar.

Ben­ito Ramos, a retired gen­eral who heads the country’s disaster-response agency, said in an advi­sory broad­cast nation­wide that res­i­dents should be on the alert for more quakes.

“Don’t sleep, espe­cially those in the east­ern seaboard … because there might be after­shocks,” he said.

The quake, with pre­lim­i­nary mag­ni­tude 7.6, hit at a depth of 34.9 kilo­me­ters (21.7 miles) and was cen­tered 106 kilo­me­ters (66 miles) east of Samar Island, the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey said.

The quake knocked out power in sev­eral towns and cities across the cen­tral and south­ern Philip­pines, though it was restored in some areas later Fri­day, accord­ing to res­cuers and local radio reports.

The Philip­pine arch­i­pel­ago is located in the Pacific “Ring of Fire” where earth­quakes and vol­canic activ­ity are com­mon. A magnitude-7.7 quake killed nearly 2,000 peo­ple in north­ern Luzon Island in 1990.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Aug 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.