A 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines on Monday, killing at least 15 people, injuring dozens and displacing tens of thousands of others as it toppled buildings and damaged bridges.
The quake struck offshore at around 7:37 a.m. local time, about 40 miles south of the city of General Santos. The authorities warned residents to evacuate to higher ground for fear of a tsunami.
“We don’t have a complete picture of the damage, but there are plenty of structures that are cracked,” said Rodrigo O. Sosmena, a senior official at the national Office of Civil Defense who is based in General Santos. In addition to the fatalities, 129 others were injured and about 70,000 people were displaced, he said.
Most of the deaths, the authorities said, occurred in General Santos, a city of about 700,000 that is known as the tuna capital of the Philippines. It is on the southern tip of Mindanao, the second-largest island in the country after Luzon.
Social media footage showed a shopping plaza crumbling into a heap in General Santos.
Nena Santos, a 72-year-old lawyer in General Santos, was on her way to the airport in a car when the quake struck. The region is part of the Philippines’ most earthquake-prone areas. She said it was the strongest she had ever experienced and that it felt like the shaking lasted five minutes.
“I just closed my eyes and said: ‘Lord, please, enough,’” Ms. Santos said by telephone.
The airport at General Santos suspended all operations, while 17 flights were canceled, according to the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines.
Ms. Santos said that she saw collapsed buildings, police cars and ambulances rushing through the streets, and students screaming outside their schools.
Julius Golez and his family live about 300 yards from the coast in General Santos. He said he scrambled to carry his sleeping 6-year-old from their bedroom to find higher ground.
“I was very scared, my knees were trembling,” he said. “We were crying; so many other people were also crying.”
The quake struck on the first day of school after a two-month break. Video footage showed terrified elementary school students crying and screaming after a makeshift roof of a building outside their school collapsed. Some residents in the affected areas reported power outages.
President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. of the Philippines said in a statement that he had ordered school closures in all affected areas in Mindanao, and that the government was mobilizing its disaster response.
Tsunami warnings issued by the authorities in Malaysia and Indonesia were later downgraded. As of Monday afternoon, Japan had a tsunami advisory in force.
The Philippines is part of the “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped chain of seismologically and geologically active islands that surround the Pacific Ocean.
Last October, a strong earthquake struck off the eastern coast of Mindanao, killing at least seven people and injuring hundreds.
John Keefe contributed reporting.
