Powerful magnitude 6.4 earthquake strikes Philippines – Check tsunami warning

A powerful magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck near Baculin, Philippines, on Wednesday (Jan 7), according tothe US Geological Survey (USGS). The quake occurred 58.5 kilometres (36 miles) about 27 kilometres east of the town of Santiago on the island of Mindanao. Following the offshore tremors, the Philippine seismology agency Phivolcs said that damage and aftershocks were expected. No tsunami warning was issued, and no immediate reports of damage were reported. Earlier, the USGS reported the quake as a magnitude 6.7.

“There was shaking. I saw some of the cars moving, but I think it was only for a short time, around five seconds,” Nash Paragas, a rescuer in the eastern province of Davao Oriental, told AFP.

Earlier in October, Eastern Mindanao was rocked by two earthquakes of magnitude 7.4 and 6.7 that killed at least eight people. Before that, a magnitude 6.9 quake killed 76 people and destroyed or damaged 72,000 houses in Cebu province in central Philippines, as per official figures.

The October quakes resulted in landslides and forced residents in coastal areas to evacuate amid a brief tsunami scare. The second quake also prompted local authorities to issue a tsunami warning. The second quake was in the same fault line, the Philippine Trench, at a depth of 37 kilometres (23 miles) off Manay town in Davao Oriental province, said Teresito Bacolcol, chief of the Philippine Institute of Seismology and Volcanology.

Earthquakes are a near-daily occurrence in the Philippines, which lies over the Pacific “ring of fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin, which makes the region more prone to earthquakes.