NCotabato engineers inspect public infra after quake

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines – Local executives dispatched Tuesday government engineers to inspect bridges, irrigation dikes and school buildings in Carmen town and surrounding areas that were hit by a magnitude 5.2 earthquake Monday afternoon.

Local government units are worried of possible damages the tremor may have possibly caused to vital infrastructure shaken by a more powerful earthquake last June 1.

The June 1 earthquake, whose epicenter was near the town proper of Carmen, damaged more than a hundred houses and school buildings, and two bridges at portions of the Sayre Highway straddling through the town and connects the adjoining provinces of North Cotabato and Bukidnon.

Cynthia Ortega, senior official of the North Cotabato provincial disaster risk reduction and management council, said monitors have also been deployed to check loads of trucks passing through bridges whose structures might have been weakened by the earthquakes.

Ortega said there were no reports of damages or injuries from Monday’s 5.2 magnitude earthquake, which was tectonic in origin.

Engineer Hermie Daquipa, provincial chief of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, said Monday’s earthquake was still an aftershock of last June’s 5.7 magnitude tremor that struck the province.

"It was part of the `normalization’ or setting of layers of soil underneath, after that June 1 major earthquake," Daquipa said.

Monday’s earthquake that shook parts of the province was preceded by 3.3 magnitude tremor last Sunday, which was also felt in several areas in Carmen, and in parts of Bukidnon and North Cotabato.

Daquipa said they have recorded a total of 430 aftershocks in North Cotabato after June 1.

“And this will continue maybe until October this year until the underground cracks created by the June 1 earthquake have been filled with earth debris falling from above,” Daquipa said.