A powerful magnitude-7.4 earthquake struck off the southern Philippines on Friday, October 10, killing at least six people and triggering regional tsunami warnings that were later lifted. The quake hit about 20 kilometers off Manay town in the Mindanao region at 9:43 am, according to the United States Geological Survey.
A powerful 6.9-magnitude aftershock later on Friday triggered a fresh tsunami alert just hours after an earlier warning, authorities said. The tremor struck at 7:12 pm, prompting the Philippine seismology office to warn of "life-threatening wave heights" and urge coastal residents to "immediately evacuate to higher grounds or move farther inland."
It came just 11 days after a magnitude-6.9 earthquake killed 75 people and injured more than 1,200 in Cebu province, according to official data.
Three miners tunneling for gold were killed when their shaft collapsed in the mountains west of Manay, rescue official Kent Simeon of Pantukan town told Agence France-Presse (AFP. One miner was pulled out alive and several others were injured, he said.
"Some tunnels collapsed, but the miners managed to get out. In that particular area, only one incident was reported," Simeon said, adding that rescuers were withdrawing from the remote site of Gumayan, accessible only by dirt bikes.
In Mati city, the largest urban center near the epicenter, one person was killed when a wall collapsed, while another suffered a fatal heart attack, local officials said. A separate fatality was reported in Davao city, more than 100 kilometers west of the epicenter, a city government statement said without giving details.
Philippine authorities issued a tsunami warning shortly after the quake, ordering evacuations along the eastern seaboard where waves of up to three meters were feared. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center lifted its own alert for the Philippines, Palau and Indonesia at around noon, saying there was "no longer a tsunami threat."
So far, the tremors seem to have caused minor and scattered damage, according to witnesses. More than 100 aftershocks were recorded, some reaching magnitude 5.0.
The provincial government said on Facebook that it had suspended classes "until further notice" and sent non-essential public workers home.
Earthquakes are a near-daily occurrence in the Philippines, which is situated on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
An 8.0-magnitude quake off Mindanao island's southwest coast in 1976 unleashed a tsunami that left 8,000 people dead or missing in the Philippines' deadliest single natural disaster.