4.4-magnitude quake in northern Philippine city near Baguio forces school closures

MANILA - A moderately strong earthquake struck on Oct 9 near a northern Philippine mountain city that is home to hundreds of thousands of people, forcing them out of buildings and shutting down schools, officials said.

Employees rushed out of office buildings in the city with a population of 366,000 following the shallow quake which occurred at 10.30am, 10 days after a powerful quake killed more than 70 people in central Philippines, residents told AFP by telephone.

“We’re going to check for damage,” building administrator Ralph Cabuag told AFP as more than 300 employees and patients filed out of the three-storey Baguio city health office.

The government seismology office earlier put the magnitude at 4.8 and said it was “expecting damage”, but subsequently lowered the figure to 4.4.

Baguio mayor Benjamin Magalong shut down the city’s elementary and high schools, the city public information office said on its Facebook page.

The state seismology office said the epicentre was located in the town of Pugo in La Union, near Baguio.

A 7.8-magnitude quake in July 1990 killed some 1,600 people in and around Baguio, a city located on a mountain range that is also one of the country’s top tourist draws.

Quakes 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 South-east Asia and across the Pacific basin.

Also on Oct 9, the government raised the death toll from

the Cebu quake

at 74, with two new deaths reported in the towns of Medellin and Tabogon in Cebu island.

The quake destroyed or damaged about 72,000 houses and injured 1,058 other people, disaster officials said. AFP