MANILA
\nAnxious residents slept outside after hundreds of aftershocks rattled the earthquake-hit northern Philippines, locals said Thursday, as President Ferdinand Marcos Jr inspected damage in the region.
\nFive people were killed and more than 150 injured when a 7.0-magnitude quake struck the lightly populated province of Abra on Wednesday morning, authorities said.
\nThe powerful quake rippled across the mountainous area, toppling buildings, triggering landslides and shaking high-rise towers hundreds of kilometres away in the capital Manila.
\n\u201cAftershocks happen almost every 20 minutes, 15 minutes since yesterday,\u201d said Reggi Tolentino, a restaurant owner in Abra\u2019s provincial capital Bangued.
\n\u201cMany slept outside last night, almost every family.\u201d
\nSome families have been given modular tents to stay in. Marcos Jr has urged people to wait for their homes to be inspected before moving back.
\nHundreds of buildings were damaged or destroyed, roads were blocked by landslides, and power was knocked out in affected areas.
\nBut in Abra, which felt the full force of the quake, overall damage had been \u201cvery minimal\u201d, police chief Colonel Maly Cula told.
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t have a lot of people in evacuation sites, although many people are staying in the streets because of the aftershocks,\u201d Cula said.
\n\u201cAbra is back to normal.\u201d
\nMarcos Jr, who took office last month, arrived in Bangued on Thursday to inspect the damage and discuss the response effort with government, military and disaster officials.
\nMore than 800 aftershocks have been recorded since the quake hit, including 24 that were strong enough to feel, the local seismological agency said.
\nAftershocks were expected to continue for \u201cseveral weeks\u201d, Renato Solidum, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, told a briefing presided over by Marcos Jr.
\nThere would be \u201ca lot\u201d in the first three days, then \u201chopefully it will decline afterwards\u201d, he said.
\nIn Vigan City, a Unesco World Heritage site and tourist destination in Ilocos Sur province, centuries-old structures built during the Spanish colonial period were damaged.
\nGovernor Jeremias Singson told TV broadcaster Teleradyo that 460 buildings in the province had been affected, including the Bantay Bell Tower, which partially crumbled.
\n\u201cOur tourism industry and small business owners were really affected,\u201d Singson said.
\nAfter visiting Vigan on Thursday, Senator Imee Marcos, the president\u2019s elder sister, said the damage to old churches in the city was \u201coverwhelming\u201d.
\nThe Philippines is regularly rocked by quakes due to its location on the Pacific \u201cRing of Fire\u201d, an arc of intense seismic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.
\nWednesday\u2019s quake was one of the strongest recorded in the Philippines in recent years and was felt across swathes of Luzon island, the most populous in the archipelago.
\nIn October 2013, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Bohol Island in the central Philippines, killing more than 200 people and triggering landslides.
\nOld churches in the birthplace of Catholicism in the Philippines were badly damaged. Nearly 400,000 were displaced and tens of thousands of houses were damaged.
\nThe powerful quake altered the island\u2019s landscape and a \u201cground rupture\u201d pushed up a stretch of earth by about three metres, creating a wall of rock above the epicentre.
\nIn 1990, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake in the northern Philippines created a ground rupture stretching over a hundred kilometres.
\nFatalities were estimated at more than 1,200, with major damage to buildings in Manila.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MANILA Anxious residents slept outside after hundreds of aftershocks rattled the earthquake-hit northern Philippines, locals said Thursday, as President Ferdinand Marcos Jr inspected damage in the region. Five people were killed and more than 150 injured when a 7.0-magnitude quake struck the lightly populated province of Abra on Wednesday morning, authorities said. The powerful quake […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274257,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-274234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n