Philippines Earthquake Buries Homes, Leaves 43 Dead

A 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of the central Philippines on Monday, killing at least 43 people and causing widespread panic, officials said.

According to the US Geological Survey, the powerful quake hit at 11:49am local time in a narrow strait between the heavily-populated island provinces of Negros and Cebu in the center of the country, damaging roads and bridges and cutting off the power supply.

A landslide – set off by the temblor – in Barangay Planas in Negros Oriental, the hardest-hit province, killed 29 people, Colonel Francisco Zosimo Patrimonio said in a mobile-phone message to Bloomberg.

“We’re now getting shovels and chain saws to start a rescue because there were people trapped inside homes and buildings. Some of them were yelling for help earlier,” the Colonel said.

Patrimonio added that fourteen others died in Guihulngan and nearby towns and that there was also an undetermined number of wounded.

Following the massive tremor, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a bulletin that “no destructive widespread tsunami” would be caused by the quake but did say that “earthquakes of this size sometimes generate local tsunamis that can be destructive along coasts located within a hundred kilometers of the earthquake epicenter.”

The Philippines is located in the Pacific “Ring of Fire” where earthquakes and volcanic activity are common. A 7.7-magnitude quake killed nearly 2,000 people in Luzon in 1990.

Here is video clip by CBS News on the recent 6.8-magnitude Philippines earthquake: