A strong earthquake rocked the northern Philippines late Tuesday, but officials said no serious damage was expected and no tsunami warning was issued. The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude 6.4 quake was centered 16.2 kilometers (10 miles) below the surface about 11 kilometers (7 miles) from Dolores on Luzon island.
The U.S. Tsunami Warning System said no warning or advisory was issued. The quake was felt across a wide area of northern Luzon, but the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said it did not expect any major damage.
The Philippine archipelago lies on the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” a region along most of the Pacific Ocean rim where many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur, making the Southeast Asian nation one of the world’s most disaster-prone.
“We are unable to make a thorough assessment of the impact now because it is nighttime and we are also thinking about our people’s safety,” rescuer Joel de Leon told AFP by phone.
In the city of Batac, about 60 kilometers north of Dolores, patients, and staff were evacuated from the 200-bed Mariano Marcos Memorial Hospital as structural experts checked the building for possible damage, staff said.
In July, a 7.0-magnitude quake also in the mountainous Abra province triggered landslides and ground fissures, killing 11 people and injuring several hundred others, according to the official count.
Quakes are a daily occurrence in the Philippines, which sits along the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, an arc of intense seismic as well as volcanic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
