MANILA (Reuters) – A strong earthquake struck the central Philippines on Thursday killing at least one person and damaging several houses and some infrastructure, officials said.
The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) said aftershocks were expected but ruled out any tsunami following the earthquake of magnitude 6.5 that rocked the towns of Jaro and Kananga in Leyte province.
Congresswoman Lucy Torres-Gomez from the province said one person had been confirmed killed and Kananga had been “badly hit”.
“There were cracks on the roads and in some areas landslides have been reported,” she told ANC News Channel, adding that a building also collapsed.
“The aftershocks are still quite strong.”
The U.S. Geological Survey said earlier the quake had a magnitude of 6.9 and struck southwest of Tacloban City, one of the areas hardest hit by a typhoon in 2013.
Tacloban’s mayor, Cristina Romualdez, said she received no reports of casualty or damage in her area.
(Reporting by Enrico dela Cruz; Editing by Robert Birsel)
By Brendan O’Brien
(Reuters) – A magnitude-5.8 earthquake hit western Montana early on Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported, and people felt the tremor hundreds of miles away.
The earthquake struck five miles (9 km) southeast of Lincoln, Montana, at about 12:30 a.m. local time, the USGS said on its website.
“New experience: woken up by an earthquake. No damage just spooky as heck!” Cole Fawcett tweeted in Crowsnest Pass, Alberta, about 285 miles (460 km) north of Lincoln.
Residents in the U.S. west flooded Twitter early on Thursday with similar experiences.
“My mom woke up and yelled at me and my dad that there was a bear shaking our trailer,” Brad Wynder said on Twitter.
No significant damage or injuries had been reported about an hour after the quake.
More than 10,000 reports from those who felt shaking were collected on the USGS website.
Several aftershocks with magnitudes of more than 4 were reported by the USGS. The Pacific Tsunami Warning center earlier reported the quake with a magnitude of 6.0.
(Editing by Andrew Roche)
ANKARA (Reuters) – An earthquake shook Iran’s southern Fars province on Friday, killing four Afghan laborers and prompting a search operation for other casualties in the thinly-populated mountainous area, Iranian state TV said.
The shallow magnitude 5.3 earthquake struck at dawn, with its epicenter 53 km southwest (33 miles) of the city of Jahrom, the USGS said. Iranian media said the quake measured 5.1.
“Four Afghans living and working on a farm were killed … (in) Saifabad village near the town of Khonj,” state TV reported.
The governor of Fars province, Mokhtar Abbasi, told state TV that rescuers were searching the quake zone for any other victims in the sparsely populated region.
Three injured people from the village of Chartala were taken to hospital but later discharged, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Iran is criss-crossed by major fault lines and has suffered several devastating earthquakes in recent years, including a 6.6 magnitude quake in 2003 which flattened the southeastern city of Bam and killed more than 25,000 people.
(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; editing by Richard Lough)