THE Philippines’ government said the death toll from Tuesday’s 6.9-magnitude quake in the central Philippines has climbed to 72, as search efforts for the missing slowed and rescuers shifted their attention to 294 injured and the 20,000 displaced.
National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council spokesman Junie Castillo disclosed this on Thursday, October 2.
Castillo said that the bodies of the three victims were pulled from the rubble of a collapsed hotel overnight Wednesday in the city of Bogo.
“We have zero missing, so the assumption is all are accounted for,” Castillo said, adding that some rescue units in Cebu province have been told to “demobilise”.
He explained that 294 people were injured, about 20,000 displaced, and nearly 600 houses destroyed across northern Cebu, with many residents forced to sleep on the streets as hundreds of aftershocks continue to rattle the area.
“One of the challenges is the aftershocks. It means residents are reluctant to return to their homes, even those houses that were not (structurally) compromised,” Castillo said.
On Thursday, Cebu provincial governor Pamela Baricuatro called for urgent assistance, stressing that thousands of people needed clean drinking water, food, clothing, temporary shelter, and volunteers to help organise and distribute relief supplies.
According to the regional civil defence office, over 110,000 people across 42 quake-affected communities will require aid to rebuild their homes and recover their livelihoods.
Large parts of the area are still without power, while dozens of patients have been forced to take shelter in tents outside the quake-damaged Cebu provincial hospital in Bogo.
President Ferdinand Marcos, accompanied by senior aides, travelled to Cebu on Thursday to assess the damage.
He also toured a partly damaged housing project in Bogo that had been built for survivors of Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, one of the Philippines’ deadliest natural disasters.
The Philippines experiences earthquakes almost daily, as it lies along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a zone of frequent seismic activity that extends from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
While most tremors are too minor to be felt, powerful and destructive quakes occur unpredictably, with no existing technology able to forecast their timing or location.
Nanji is an investigative journalist with the ICIR. She has years of experience in reporting and broadcasting human angle stories, gender inequalities, minority stories, and human rights issues. She has documented sexual war crimes in armed conflict, sex for grades in Nigerian Universities, harmful traditional practices and human trafficking.