Civil protection, ‘death toll stopped at 8, no one missing’
The death toll has stopped at eight and there are no missing people, according to the Civil Protection, but in the southern Philippines, hit yesterday by a double earthquake of magnitude 7.4 and then 6.7 (not 6.9, as initially assessed by the USGS) and by a swarm of hundreds of smaller tremors, a large part of the population of the eastern part of the island of Mindanao spent the night in the open, fearing new collapse.
Civil Protection spokesman Ezzra James Fernandez said there were no missing people, that damage to infrastructure was “minimal” and that road clearing operations were underway. In the municipality of Manay, residents were clearing debris from buildings shaken on Saturday. “Our little house and our little shop were destroyed,” Ven Lupogan, who lives there, told AFP.
“We have nowhere to sleep. There is no electricity. We have nothing to eat,” he said. A strong 6.9 magnitude earthquake had already hit the Philippine island of Cebu in late September, killing 75 people and destroying around 72,000 homes.
