The Cebu provincial government has put out a call on its official Facebook page for medical volunteers to assist in the aftermath of the quake.
“There could be people trapped beneath collapsed buildings,” provincial rescue official Wilson Ramos told AFP, citing rescue efforts underway in San Remigio and Bogo. He said he did not know how many people were missing.
Overnight recovery efforts were hampered by the dark as well as aftershocks, he added.
The quake caused power lines to trip, leading to outages across Cebu and nearby central islands, the National Grid Corp of the Philippines said in an advisory, adding it was still assessing the extent of the damage.
Police Colonel Enrico Figueroa, chief of the Cebu City police, said some pole-mounted transformers exploded during the earthquake.
Cebu governor Pamela Baricuatro said an unspecified number of houses and a hospital were damaged in Bogo and elsewhere and that emergency medical teams were being deployed to treat residents who were pinned and injured.
“We’re sending already a trauma team there, doctors and nurses are on the way,” Baricuatro told the DZMM radio network. ”We need medicine, food, medical teams.”
Cebu firefighter Joey Leeguid told AFP from San Fernando town: “We felt the shake here in our station, it was so strong. We saw our locker moving from left to right, we felt slightly dizzy for a while but we are all fine now.”
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