George Apsay, 48, led a family of at least ten relatives to a patch of high ground about two kilometers from the coast of Mati City, joining a line of around a hundred vehicles that grew in the dark.
“We usually come here when there are evacuations like this,” Apsay told MindaNews. The spot, on the Diversion Road in Madang, Central, is a place locals call Golden Valley. He had grabbed a tarp big enough for the family to huddle under, and he said they would likely sleep there.
The second quake had sent people scrambling. Phivolcs, the country’s seismology institute, warned that waves taller than one meter could reach the coast between 7:12 p.m. and 9:12 p.m. on Friday. The magnitude 6.9 tremor that triggered that alert struck offshore of Manay, Davao Oriental, at 7:12 p.m., about 36 kilometers southeast of town and 10 kilometers deep. It followed a magnitude 7.4 quake the same morning.
In Mati, the quake rattled gas stations into long queues. Rodel Tanio, 41, a promo-diser at the NCCC, left when his store shut and waited in line at a Shell Station in Madang. A young man held out a cut bottle. “I just need 50 pesos, sir,” he told MindaNews in Cebuano, and the attendant filled it while he paid in coins.
Mohaimen Sangco, 31, waited to be counted at the Dahican Barangay Gym with his wife, two kids, a cousin and two seniors. His family had only decided to move when the second, nighttime quake hit. “We’re staying here until tomorrow,” he said in Cebuano. “Dili mi mag kompyansa (We won’t leave things to chance).”
Officials were still counting the damage. At least eight people died and nearly 500 were hurt across the region, while thousands left coastal and upland barangays. Manay’s municipal government declared a state of calamity on October 11, covering all 17 barangays to unlock emergency funds; Caraga followed. Damage teams recorded 278 homes totally destroyed and another 912 partly damaged in Davao Oriental.
Phivolcs lifted its tsunami advisory after instruments measured only minor sea-level shifts of up to 30 centimeters. By October 12, it had logged more than 800 aftershocks, 31 of them magnitude 4.0 or higher and the strongest at 5.9.
Sources
- Panic, worry in Mati City after second quake; a magnitude 6.9 hits hours after a 7.4
- Manay Quakes Explained
