The 7-magnitude quake was centered in the hard-hit mountainous province of Ambra, said Renato Solidum, head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. “The ground shook like I was in a cradle and the lights suddenly went out. We rushed out of the office and I heard screaming and some of my colleagues were in tears,” said Michael Brillantes, a security officer in Abra’s Lagangilang town, near the epicenter. “It was the strongest earthquake I’ve felt and I thought the ground was going to open,” Brillantes told The Associated Press by cellphone. A villager died when he was hit by falling concrete slabs on his house in Ambra, where at least 25 others were injured and mostly hospitalized, officials said. A construction worker was hit by debris and died in the strawberry-growing mountain town of La Trinidad in Benguet province, some roads were closed by landslides and rocks. Five people were injured when rocks and debris hit their SUV and a truck on a hillside road in Mountain province near Benguet, officials said. Many houses and buildings had cracked walls, including some that collapsed in Abra, where new President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who took office less than a month ago, planned to travel to meet victims and local officials. The Red Cross released an image of a small three-storey building leaning precariously towards a debris-covered road in Ambra. A video taken by a panicked witness showed parts of an old stone church tower peeling off and then falling in a cloud of dust on top of a hill. Patients, some in wheelchairs, and medical staff were evacuated from at least two hospitals in Manila, about 300 kilometers (200 miles) south of Lagangilang, but were later told to return after engineers found only a few small cracks in the walls. The magnitude of the earthquake was downgraded from an initial magnitude of 7.3 after further analysis. The quake was caused by movement on a local fault at a depth of 25 kilometers (15 miles), the institute said, adding that damage and more aftershocks were expected. The US Geological Survey measured the earthquake’s magnitude at 7.0 and a depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles). Shallower earthquakes tend to cause more damage. The Philippines lies along the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’, an arc of faults around the Pacific Ocean where most of the world’s earthquakes occur. It is also hit by about 20 typhoons and tropical storms each year, making it one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. A magnitude 7.7 earthquake killed nearly 2,000 people in the northern Philippines in 1990.
Associated Press reporters Joeal Calupitan and Aaron Favila contributed to this report.
