7.0-magnitude quake strikes off southern Philippines: USGS

A representative image. seismograph PHOTO: Shutterstock

A 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the southern Philippines Thursday, the US Geological Survey said, but there were no immediate reports of damage and a tsunami warning was not issued.

The quake hit about 310 kilometres (193 miles) southeast of Davao city on the main southern island of Mindanao at a depth of 95 kilometres at 8:23 pm local time (1223 GMT), according to USGS.

Residents in the town of Jose Abad Santos, near the southern tip of the island, lost electricity for about 15 minutes after the quake shook the region but there was no damage, police chief Captain Glabynarry Murillo told AFP.

“From our vantage point at the police station we saw many residents rushing outside,” said Murillo.

“We also rushed outside because the police station is a three-storey building.”

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology warned of aftershocks but said damage was not expected.

“It was felt extensively because it’s a major earthquake but it’s deep so it won’t be damaging to the infrastructure because it’s considerably far (from the island),” Renato Solidum, director of the institute, told DZBB radio station.

The quake was felt on the northern Indonesian island of Sangihe, but similarly there were no injuries or damage reported.

“Here in Sangihe capital, Tahuna people were panicking for a while and they fled home because the quake was quite long and strong,” Rivolius Pudihang, head of the disaster mitigation agency in Sangihe, North Sulawesi, told AFP.

“But now things have returned to normal, people have returned home and all is safe.”

The Philippines and Indonesia are regularly rocked by quakes due to their positions on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.