P71M worth of properties damaged in Cotabato quake

COTABATO CITY, Philippines -  The strong earthquake on Saturday  night that jolted North Cotabato and nearby areas in Mindanao   caused some  P71 million in damage, officials estimated.

Local officials in North Cotabato’s Carmen town, worst affected by the magnitude 5.7 tremor, said a total of 114 houses, two bridges and several school buildings were damaged, forcing education officials to defer the opening of classes in the municipality.

Another earthquake of the same magnitude  has again jolted North Cotabato past 4:00 a.m. Monday, with its epicenter now much nearer, only seven kilometers, to the town proper of Carmen.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said the epicenter of Saturday night’s earthquake was more than 10 kilometers away from the town center.

North Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza said they were forced to close  the stretches of the Sayre Highway in Carmen after the earthquake Saturday night weakened the structures of bridges connecting portions of the thoroughfare.

“We noticed depressions on the approaches on both ends of the two bridges,” Mendoza told reporters.

Two barangay halls and several classrooms at Barangays Kimadzil and Kibudtungan, both in Carmen, have also been damaged.

Provincial education officials announced Monday all schools in Carmen will remain closed until further notice to ensure the safety of school children as aftershocks continue to rock the province, and enable them to inspect the damaged school buildings.

"We are still conducting assessments. Some school buildings have collapsed, others have huge cracks on walls and floors," Dionisio Costes, district supervisor of public schools in Carmen, told reporters.

More than a dozen people, mostly children, were injured when boulders and soil from hills, loosened by the earthquake, cascaded down to their houses in the two affected barangays in Carmen.