PhilStarGlobal/AFP-Oct 1
The death toll from a powerful quake that rocked the central Philippines has risen to 26, with 147 others injured, the government’s disaster relief agency said Wednesday, October 1. The shallow 6.9-magnitude quake that struck off the island of Cebu late Tuesday toppled or damaged at least 22 buildings across the central Philippines, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said in its latest bulletin. The toll is feared to continue rising as rescuers worked through the night. The quake stuck off the island’s northern end near Bogo, a city of 90,000 people. There, at least thirteen were reported killed within 100 kilometers from the epicenter. The Cebu provincial government has put out a call on its official Facebook page for medical volunteers to assist in the aftermath of the quake. “There could be people trapped beneath collapsed buildings,” provincial rescue official Wilson Ramos told AFP. He said he did not know how many people were missing. Recovery efforts were being hampered by the dark as well as aftershocks, he added. The USGS has recorded four quakes of magnitude 5.0 or higher in the area following the first tremor. A number of village roads also sustained damage. The quake caused power lines to trip, leading to outages across Cebu and nearby central islands, the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines said in an advisory. 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 Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin. Read more at: https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2025/10/01/2476692/cebu-shaken-deadly-quake-kills-26-search-ongoing
