Magnitude 4.4 earthquake strikes La Union, rattles Baguio, other areas

MANILA, October 10 ------ A magnitude 4.4 earthquake struck La Union on Thursday morning and rattled neighboring Baguio City, forcing people out of buildings and shutting down schools, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) said.

The quake hit 2 kilometers northeast of Pugo town at around 10:30 a.m yesterday. It struck a shallow depth of 10 kilometers. The tremor was felt at a "moderately strong" intensity 4 in Pugo and Tubao, La Union and in Baguio City. Employees rushed out of office buildings in Baguio, a mountain city of 366,000. "We're going to check for damage," building administrator Ralph Cabuag told AFP as more than 300 employees and patients filed out of the 3-story Baguio city health office.

Baguio Mayor Benjamin Magalong shut down the city's elementary and high schools, the city public information office said on its Facebook page. A 7.8 quake in July 1990 killed some 1,600 people in and around Baguio, a city located atop a mountain range that is also one of the country's top tourist draws. PHIVOLCS added that the tremor was felt at intensity 3 in Itogon, Benguet; Villasis, Pangasinan; and San Fernando, La Union.

The government seismology office earlier put the magnitude at 4.8 and said it was "expecting damage" but subsequently lowered the figure to 4.4. The quake comes 10 days after a powerful quake killed more than 70 people in Cebu. Also on Thursday, the government raised the death toll from the Cebu quake at 74, with two new deaths reported in the towns of Medellin and Tabogon in Cebu Island.

The quake destroyed or damaged about 72,000 houses and injured 1,058 other people, disaster officials said. Quakes are a near-daily occurrence in the Philippines, which is situated on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", an arc of intense seismic activity stretching from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

Source: news.abs-cbn.com