A 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck the northern Philippines late Tuesday, the US Geological Service said, sending panicked residents onto the streets, with local officials warning of possible damage.
“We expect damage here,” seismologist Charm Villamil told reporters after the quake, which struck around 10:59 p.m. (1459 GMT) near the highland town of Dolores.
She said the impact on buildings would depend on their structural integrity as well as the properties of the soil they were built on.
The civil protection office in Abra province, where Dolores is located, told AFP there were no immediate reports of casualties but the extent of the damage would not be known until morning.
The tremor, which occurred at a relatively shallow depth of 15.2 kilometers (9.4 miles), was felt as far as the capital, Manila, more than 330 kilometers to the south.
Reached by phone, Dolores Patrol Officer Jeffrey Blanes told AFP that “buildings were shaking so people ran outside”.
“We can’t thoroughly assess the impact now because it’s night and we’re also thinking about the safety of our people,” rescuer Joel de Leon told AFP by phone.
In the town of Batac, about 60 kilometers north of Dolores, patients and staff were evacuated from the 200-bed Mariano Marcos Memorial Hospital as structural engineers checked the building for possible damage, employees said.
In July, also in the mountainous province of Abra, a magnitude 7.0 tremor triggered landslides and landslides, killing 11 people and injuring hundreds more, according to official counts.
Earthquakes are a daily occurrence in the Philippines, which lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire, an arc of intense seismic and volcanic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific Basin.
The country’s civil defense agency regularly conducts drills simulating earthquake scenarios along active fault lines.
In October 2013, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck the central island of Bohol, killing more than 200 people.
This powerful tremor changed the island’s landscape, and a “earth breach” pushed up a section of earth by up to ten feet, creating a rock face over the epicenter.
