2023-06-15 05:01:39
A magnitude earthquake 6.2 shook the coast of southern Luzon, north of the Philippines, on Thursday and about 100 kilometers from Manila, without the authorities initially reporting damage or declaring a tsunami alert.
The United States Geological Survey, which records seismic activity around the world, located the quake at a depth of 124 kilometers, off the southwestern coast of the island of Luzon, at 10:19 a.m. local time (around 09:00 a.m. 19 p.m. Colombian time).
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For now, there are no major damages or casualties.
There was no immediate information on victims or damage caused, but emergency services were deployed in the area to gauge the impact of the quake, Mendoza declared. The head of the Catalagan disaster management agency, Roland Torres, said the shaking lasted between 30 seconds and a minute.
(You can read: What does it mean for an earthquake to be greater than 5 magnitude? The damage it could cause).
The tremor was registered just 4 kilometers from the coast of Calatagán, a municipality in the province of Batangas with more than 58,000 inhabitants, located about 90 kilometers southwest of Manila, where it was felt strongly.
School classes have been suspended in Calatagán to assess possible damage to buildings and due to the risk of aftershocks, local authorities reported. Videos posted on various social networks show the residents of Calatagán waiting on the street to return to their homes and jobs, without the local authorities having reported any victims or serious material damage so far.
Likewise, several institutional buildings in Manila were evacuated after the earthquake, including the House of Representatives (Lower House), the Stock Exchange or the Human Rights Commission of the Philippines, as well as most of the university campuses in the Philippine capital.
(Of your interest: Scientists detect seismic waves on Mars for the first time).
The Manila subway has also stopped its activity and the authorities have forced passengers to vacate the cars. For its part, the Philippine seismological agency (Phivolcs) ruled out in a statement that the earthquake is related to the increasing volcanic activity of Mayon and Taal, both volcanoes on the island of Luzon, relatively close to the epicenter of the earthquake.
There, the inhabitants rushed into the street when they noticed the tremor. The information officer of the civil defense office, Diego Mariano, said: “For now, there are no major damages or casualties” according to the reports available so far.
Earthquakes are common in this archipelago located on the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’, an area of intense seismic and volcanic activity that stretches from Japan to Southeast Asia. In October 2013, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck the central island of Bohol, killing around 200 people.
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