প্রকাশ: 28/07/2022
Anxious residents slept outside after hundreds of
aftershocks rattled the earthquake-hit northern Philippines, locals said
Thursday, as President Ferdinand Marcos Jr flew to the region to inspect the
damage.
Five people were killed and more than 150 injured when a
7.0-magnitude quake struck the lightly populated province of Abra on Wednesday
morning, authorities said.
The powerful quake rippled across the mountainous region,
toppling buildings, triggering landslides and shaking high-rise towers hundreds
of kilometres away in the capital Manila.
"Aftershocks happen almost every 20 minutes, 15 minutes
since yesterday," said Reggi Tolentino, a restaurant owner in Abra's
provincial capital Bangued.
"Many slept outside last night, almost every
family."
Hundreds of buildings were damaged or destroyed, roads were
blocked by landslides and power was knocked out in affected provinces.
But in Abra, which felt the full force of the quake, overall
damage had been "very minimal", police chief Colonel Maly Cula told
AFP.
"We don't have a lot of people in evacuation sites
although many people are staying in the streets because of the
aftershocks," Cula said.
"Abra is back to normal."
More than 800 aftershocks have been recorded since the quake
hit, including 24 that were strong enough to feel, the local seismological
agency said.
In Vigan City, a UNESCO World Heritage site and tourist
destination in Ilocos Sur province, centuries-old structures built during the
Spanish colonial period were damaged.
Governor Jeremias Singson told Teleradyo that 460 buildings
in the province had been affected, including the Bantay Bell Tower, which
partially crumbled.
"Our tourism industry and small business owners were
really affected," Singson said.
The Philippines is regularly rocked by quakes due to its
location on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", an arc of intense seismic
activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the
Pacific basin.
Wednesday's quake was one of the strongest recorded in the
Philippines in recent years and was felt across swathes of Luzon island, the
most populous in the archipelago.
In October 2013, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Bohol
Island in the central Philippines, killing more than 200 people and triggering
landslides.
Old churches in the birthplace of Catholicism in the
Philippines were badly damaged. Nearly 400,000 were displaced and tens of
thousands of houses were damaged.
The powerful quake altered the island's landscape and a
"ground rupture" pushed up a stretch of earth by about three metres,
creating a wall of rock above the epicentre.
In 1990, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake in the northern
Philippines created a ground rupture stretching over a hundred kilometres.
Fatalities were estimated to reach over 1,200, with major
damage to buildings in Manila.
– BSS/AFP
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