In the northern Philippines on Wednesday, a strong earthquake triggered landslides and knocked down buildings, killing at least five people and injuring dozens more.
Hospital patients in the capital were evacuated, and terrified people fled inside.
According to Renato Solidum, the director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, the mid-morning shaking was a major earthquake with a 7-magnitude epicentre in the mountainous region of Abra province.
“The lights abruptly went out as the ground shook like I was on a swing. We hurriedly exited the office, and I overheard screams and saw some of my friends crying “proclaimed Michael Brillantes, a safety officer in the nearby Abra town of Lagangilang.
Brillantes told The Associated Press over the phone, “I thought the ground would open up because it was the most powerful quake I’ve ever felt.
At least five people perished, the majority in ruined buildings. In Abra, one villager was killed when falling cement slabs struck him in his home, injuring dozens more.
In the strawberry-growing mountain town of La Trinidad in the province of Benguet, a worker was pinned to death when a small building that was under construction collapsed.
People fled outside as walls and buildings in the municipality of Dolores shook, according to Police Major Edwin Sergio, who spoke to AFP.
Sergio remarked that the earthquake was “very strong” and mentioned that the local market’s windows were damaged.
In Bangued, fissures were visible in the asphalt road and ground in a video that was posted on Facebook and verified by AFP.
According to Major Nazareno Emia, the police chief, “some of the buildings here show cracks.” Both the power and the internet were turned off.
In Abra, where President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who took office less than a month ago, planned to travel on Thursday to meet with victims and local officials, hundreds of homes and buildings had cracked walls, including some that collapsed.
At a press conference, Marcos Jr. said that the chandeliers in his office at the riverside Malacanang presidential palace complex started swinging and making noises. He described the ground shaking as being “extremely strong.”
In a terrifying near-death incident, Filipino photojournalist Harley Palangchao and friends were driving in two vans downhill in Peak Province when they heard thunder-like thuds and looked ahead to see an avalanche of rocks the size of cars falling from a steep mountain.
The 44-year-old father of three placed his camera in the front seat and took what he felt may be his final photographs, amidst cries from his friends in their van to “back up, back up!”
One person was hurt when a boulder touched the vehicle in front of them, but he and the others in the second van drove backward quickly enough to avoid harm.
Palangchao told the AP, “I was thinking there should at least be a record if something occurred to us. It was an awful experience,
Abra’s three-story structure was shown in a Red Cross photo sagging precariously toward a road that was littered with rubble.
Parts of a historic stone church tower were seen flaking off and collapsing in a cloud of dust on a hilltop in a witness’s panicked video capture.
At least two hospitals in Manila, about 300 kilometres (200 miles) south of Lagangilang, had patients and medical staff evacuated, some of whom were in wheelchairs.
However, after engineers discovered only a few small holes in the walls, they were instructed to return.
After additional investigation, the earthquake’s magnitude was reduced from its initial 7.3 magnitude.
The institute stated the earthquake was caused by movement in a small local fault at a depth of 17 kilometres (10 miles), and it added that it anticipated damage and several aftershocks.
The Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a ring of faults around the Pacific Ocean where the majority of earthquakes in the world take place, runs along the coast of the Philippines.
In addition, it experiences roughly 20 typhoons and tropical storms year, making it one of the nations most vulnerable to natural disasters.
Nearly 2,000 people were killed in the northern Philippines in 1990 by a magnitude 7.7 earthquake.