Powerful earthquake shakes southern Philippines, killing at least seven
A powerful underwater earthquake shook the southern Philippines on Friday, killing several people, damaging a school, shopping centers and dozens of homes and knocking out power in villages, officials said.
At least seven people died as a result of the earthquake, which also caused injuries and left two people missing, Mark Timbal, a spokesman for the Philippine Civil Defense, said in a preliminary report on Saturday.
The earthquake, which occurred at 4:14 p.m. local time, had a magnitude of 6.7 Geological Survey of the United States. The earthquake struck about 25 kilometers south of Mindanao, a large island in the south of the country, at a depth of 78 kilometers under the sea. All reported deaths occurred in that region.
Three of the deaths occurred in General Santos, a city about 40 miles (65 kilometers) north of the quake’s epicenter, Mr. Timbal said. City officials said at a news conference Saturday that 32 people had been hospitalized and more than 500 others had been treated for minor injuries.
After the earthquake, Lorelie Geronimo Pacquiao, the mayor of General Santos, home to nearly 700,000 people, suspended classes at all schools until further notice, a city statement said Saturday.
Two major malls in General Santos, SM City and Robinsons Palace, are temporarily closed to inspect their premises. Photos from shopping centers in the region showed some ceilings falling to the ground.
General Santos International Airport suffered minor damage, Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines spokesman Eric Apolonio said. Hairline cracks appeared on some of the airport’s columns, he said, adding that there were no injuries and the airport remained operational.
“We hope that you and your family are safe despite the consequences of the earthquake that has struck our city,” the city said on social media on Friday, warning residents to beware of aftershocks.
Earthquakes are common in the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands that stretch across the “Ring of Fire,” a region in the Pacific Ocean where tectonic plates grind against each other. The Philippine Sea Plate has also produced active volcanoes and destructive seismic activity in Japan and Taiwan, the USGS said.
In July, an earthquake measuring seven on the Richter scale killed at least four people in the northern Philippines. In 2019, the southern Philippines was hit by several deadly earthquakes, the strongest of which was a magnitude 6.9 earthquake that killed at least two people.