Many people evacuated buildings in the Philippine capital, Manila, on Tuesday after an earthquake of magnitude 5.9 struck off the main Luzon island. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The Philippines lies on the Pacific’s ‘Ring of Fire’ and is prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The government regularly holds evacuation drills. Many of the city’s high-rise office blocks have sirens to warn of tremors. In the past, a strong earthquake has killed people in the heavily populated capital and also damaged churches and an airport.
A magnitude 6.2 earthquake last week in the northern Philippines left several people dead and hundreds injured. It shook buildings and triggered panic as residents dashed out of their houses. The Philippines is the world’s largest archipelago.
Thousands of residents stayed outside their homes for hours in many towns, including some drenched by an overnight downpour due to the earthquake and tsunami scare. They included some sleeping at their relatives’ houses, swaying with the quake.
Rescuers worked overnight to recover bodies in the rubble of a supermarket that collapsed in Monday’s quake, which killed four people and wounded dozens more. They used crowbars and sniffer dogs to search for survivors from the pile of concrete, twisted metal, and wood that was left by the disaster.
In Manila, office workers rushed out of buildings as the ground shook. Some were seen wearing hard hats as they ran to safety. Some residents jumped out of their windows to escape the building swaying, and others fled after furniture fell off walls.
The seismology agency said on X, formerly Twitter, that it did not expect damage but warned of aftershocks. It recorded the offshore earthquake at magnitude 5.9, with a depth of 79 kilometers (49.09 miles).
A tsunami warning was issued for some coastal areas, but the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii later dropped it. The Philippines Seismic Institute advised citizens in some provinces to move away from beaches and inland.
Several hours after the quake, two strong aftershocks struck near the southeastern tip of the island of Luzon. The second one was felt more strongly and lasted longer.