DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY, <\/p>\n
Officials in Indonesia, Philippines and Japan warn of possible tsunami waves after quake off Mindanao.<\/p>\n
A powerful earthquake has struck the Philippines, destroying buildings and triggering tsunami alerts across Asia.<\/p>\n
The magnitude 7.8 quake struck off the southern island of Mindanao shortly before 7:40am local time on Monday (23:40 GMT Sunday), according to the United States Geological Survey.<\/p>\n
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The initial earthquake was followed by more than an hour of aftershocks, according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS).<\/p>\n
Video posted on official social media channels showed a three-storey building that housed a Jollibee restaurant collapsing in a cloud of debris and dust in Mindanao\u2019s General Santos City, startling onlookers.<\/p>\n
Other images showed extensive damage to buildings, including smashed windows and caved-in roofs.<\/p>\n
The Philippine seismology authority said the city, which lies in the southern region of Soccsksargen, experienced a 7 out of 10 \u201cvery strong\u201d earthquake on its internal intensity scale.<\/p>\n
The number of potential casualties is yet to be confirmed.<\/p>\n
Mary Ann Blanco Rhudy, a Catholic nun working for Notre Dame of Dadiangas University in General Santos, said she was travelling to the college when the earthquake struck.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cars on the road were moving erratically. I am lucky that they didn\u2019t crash against each other,\u201d she told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe trees on the side of the road were also swaying violently.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rhudy said some of the buildings at the college have partially collapsed.<\/p>\n
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos said on Monday morning that emergency agencies had been activated, including the Office of Civil Defence and the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.<\/p>\n
Marcos urged people to follow government advisories about the risk of tsunami waves.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo our kababayans [countrymen] in the affected provinces, please heed the tsunami warning. Move to higher ground now. Do not wait. Your life is more important than anything left behind,\u201d Marcos said.<\/p>\n
Marcos said schools across several provinces of Mindanao have been closed for the day.<\/p>\n
The US-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said earlier that tsunami waves as high as 3 metres (9.8 feet) could hit coastal areas of the Philippines, and waves of up to 1 metre (3.3 ft) were possible in parts of Indonesia and Malaysia.<\/p>\n
The first waves were expected to hit the Philippines and parts of Indonesia at about 10am local time (02:00 GMT), followed by southern Japan and Taiwan at about 11am (03:00 GMT), and Micronesia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands an hour later, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).<\/p>\n
The US National Tsunami Warning Center, which downgraded the quake from an earlier estimate of magnitude 8.2, said the quake posed no threat to coastal areas of the US.<\/p>\n
Officials in Japan, the Philippines, and Indonesia have issued alerts warning of hazardous waves and advising citizens in coastal areas to get to safety.<\/p>\n
Philippine authorities said people in nine provinces \u2013 including Sarangani, Davao Occidental, Tawi-Tawi and Sulu \u2013 should immediately evacuate to higher ground or further inland.<\/p>\n
\u201cOwners of boats in harbours, estuaries or shallow coastal water of the above-mentioned provinces should secure their boats and move away from the waterfront,\u201d PHIVOLCS said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoats already at sea during this period should stay offshore in deep waters until further advised.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indonesia also issued an immediate evacuation order for parts of northern Sulawesi, northern Gorontalo province and the Sangihe Islands, with residents urged to move to higher ground.<\/p>\n
A tsunami warning is also in place for Japan\u2019s outlying islands, including Okinawa and the country\u2019s southern coast.<\/p>\n
Officials in the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam cancelled earlier tsunami warnings, but said there was still a risk of strong currents and dangerous beach conditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY, Officials in Indonesia, Philippines and Japan warn of possible tsunami waves after quake off Mindanao.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":722275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6109,9830,43,44,2053,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-722274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-asia-pacific","tag-earthquakes","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-philippines","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=722274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/722275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}