Philippine quake toll climbs to 41 amid outdoor hospitals and severed communities

WEB DESK: Doctors in the southern Philippines treated patients in tents pitched under a scorching sun on Tuesday, including assisting a young mother through childbirth, as the death toll from a powerful earthquake rose to 41.

The magnitude-7.8 quake struck off the coast of Mindanao island on Monday, leaving thousands displaced and more than 450 injured, according to national and local disaster agencies. Only four people were believed missing as rescue operations continued.

In hardest-hit Sarangani province, some areas remained reachable only by helicopter, while fears of aftershocks slowed efforts on the ground. A series of strong aftershocks followed the initial tremor, accompanied by hundreds of smaller quakes.

Cut-off communities and race against time

Infrastructure damage has left some communities isolated for at least a week, with roads destroyed and a bridge collapsed, local officials said.

At a hospital outside General Santos, the region’s largest city, medical staff worked outdoors behind makeshift screens, where cries of “push” were followed by the sound of a newborn’s wail. In Glan municipality, more than 60 patients were moved to beds outside another hospital after a landslide buried at least 13 people in their homes and engineers deemed the building unsafe.

Rescuers in General Santos resumed searching the rubble of a collapsed grocery store for two missing employees, using dogs to scour the debris of concrete and twisted metal. Officials described the operation as shifting towards recovery, though formal decisions were still pending. Separately, a Coast Guard vessel searched coastal waters for two swimmers who vanished when the sea churned violently during the quake.

Tsunami alerts lifted

Videos verified by AFP showed the dramatic collapse of a shopping centre housing a Jollibee restaurant and an unoccupied school building, as well as terrified schoolchildren clinging to teachers during the violent shaking. No one was reported injured under a toppling metal structure at the school.

Tsunami warnings were issued for coastal areas in the southern Philippines and neighbouring Indonesia, prompting evacuations, but the alerts were cancelled by midday as the threat receded. Small waves reached Japan’s Pacific coast, where an advisory had been issued, but caused no damage.

Eastern Mindanao was previously struck by strong earthquakes in October that killed at least eight people.