MANILA – A magnitude 6.1 earthquake on Tuesday disrupted the speech being delivered by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo before students of a private school in Cagayan province in the Northern Luzon highlands.
Reports from correspondents of Metro Manila-based radio stations covering the event quoted an official of the government-run Philippine Information Agency as saying that the President paused and then stiffened when she felt the ground shaking.
The temblor occurred while President Arroyo was speaking before students of the Franco Vargas College in the capital city of Tuguegarao, Cagayan at 10:51 am Tuesday in which she dwelt on her achievements on agriculture in the nine years that she stayed in Malacanang.
But the reports added there was no panic inside the school auditorium where the President was speaking as part of her “charm offensive†to acquaint students on the legacies on public governance that she would leave when she steps down from power on June 30.
Elsewhere in Cagayan, however, police reported that in the town of Santa Ana, for instance, children ran out of their classrooms when the earthquake occurred.
Government employees and their counterparts in the private sector also fled their offices to seek safety in the open spaces, police also said.
Disaster control officials pointed out their reaction was understandable since Cagayan and its neighboring provinces in Cagayan Valley in the Northern Luzon highlands were among the areas facing the Pacific Ocean that were placed under the tsunami level 2 alert on Sunday.
The alert was raised by the government-run Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) following the magnitude 8.8 earthquake that devastated Chile on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Renato Solidum, the Phivolcs director, said they did not receive reports of casualty or damage from the Tuesday morning earthquake in Cagayan which were also felt elsewhere in varying but lesser degrees in the region.
Solidum also said the earthquake was of tectonic origin which occurred 130 kilometers northeast of Tuguegarao.
But he assured the temblor did not pose any danger to the safety of Cagayan residents or that it would cause tsunami waves. He explained even if it were a magnitude 7.1 earthquake, it would still not be strong enough to create giant and devastating waves.
Nevertheless, Filipinos have remained on edge since the Chile temblor amid at least three relatively strong earthquakes that jolted various regions of the country since Sunday when the tsunami alert level 2 was in effect.
On Sunday, Phivolcs reported that a magnitude 5.1 earthquake rocked the Batanes group of islands in extreme Northern Luzon, followed the following day by a similar magnitude 5.1 earthquake in Davao Oriental province in Mindanao.
There were no reported casualties or damage, Phivolcs said but added this did not ease the tension created among the Filipinos who are fully aware of the devastation wrought by the earthquakes in Chile and earlier on the island nation of Haiti in the Caribbean.
Phivolcs also said the magnitude 6.1 earthquake that jolted Cagayan on Tuesday was the strongest to hit the Philippines since January. The second, it said, was a magnitude 6 temblor that hit the island province of Catanduanes in the Bicol region on January 26.
Loading ...
Reader’s Views