A powerful magnitude-7.4 earthquake has struck the southern Philippines, prompting warnings of a “destructive tsunami” along the country’s Pacific coast within hours.
The quake struck about 20 kilometres from Manay in the Mindanao region at 9.43am (11.43am AEDT), the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said.
“Destructive tsunami is expected with life-threatening wave heights” on the archipelago nation’s east coast, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology reported.
Waves of up to three metres were forecast for threatened areas in the Philippines and up to a metre-high waves in Palau and Indonesia, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
Coastal residents in these areas “are strongly advised to immediately evacuate to higher grounds or move farther inland”, it said.
Children evacuated a school after a strong earthquake in Davao City in the Philippines on Friday. Source: AP / Manman Dejeto
There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties, though police officer Dianne Lacorda said the province of Davao Oriental, which includes Manay, expected damage.
“Our tumblers on the table were moving and falling,” she said, adding power and communication lines have been cut, and the authorities are unable to assess the potential damage in some areas.
‘Shaking was so strong’
Christine Sierte, a teacher in the town of Compostela near Manay, said she was in the middle of an online meeting when the violent shaking started.
“It was very slow at first, then it got stronger … that’s the longest time of my life. We weren’t able to walk out of the building immediately because the shaking was so strong,” she said.
“The ceilings of some offices fell, but luckily no one was injured.”
Sierte said some of the school’s nearly 1,000 students “suffered panic attacks and difficulty in breathing”.
Around the same time as the Philippine quake, USGS reported a shallow 6.2-magnitude tremor just over 140km south-east of Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.
A 99km-deep quake also struck near the Pacific island nation’s second-largest city of Lae on Tuesday. No major damage was reported.
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.
This is a developing story and this article will be updated.
