Tsunami alert after 7.6 quake off Philippines

MANILA — A 7.6-magnitude undersea quake struck off the eastern coast of the Philippines late Friday, triggering tsunami warnings across the region. At least one house collapsed and power was knocked out in several Philippine cities, local radio reported.

A tsunami alert originally was issued for several countries including Japan and for Pacific islands as far away as the Northern Marianas, but most of them were soon lifted, leaving warnings only for the Philippines, Indonesia and Palau, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said.

“My neighbors and I have evacuated. We are now on our way to the mountains,” fisherman Marlon Lagramado told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from the coastal town of Guiwan in the Philippine province of Eastern Samar.

The quake, with preliminary magnitude 7.6, hit at a depth of 34.9 km and was centered 106 km east of Samar Island, the US Geological Survey said.

The head of the Philippine seismology agency, Renato Solidum, said that residents living along the coastline of eastern Samar Island were advised to evacuate to high ground in case of the tsunami.

A local radio station reported one houses collapsed in southern Cagayan de Oro city and there was no electricity in several other towns and cities across the central and southern Philippines.

“An earthquake of this size has the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines in the region near the epicentre within minutes to hours,” the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said in a bulletin.

Solidum said people living along the east coast of the country had been ordered to evacuate. “It is a shallow quake and could trigger a tsunami so we have raised an alert,” Solidum said on local radio. — Agencies