Aftershock forces Philippine rescuers to flee collapsed grocery store

The aftershocks were the new front line in the Philippines on Wednesday, forcing nearly 30 firefighters and coast guard personnel to run from a partially collapsed grocery store in General Santos while they searched for a missing employee. A safety officer’s whistle and shouted warnings came just before concrete debris crashed down, turning a rescue sweep into an urgent evacuation.

The jolt landed in a region already battered by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck at 7:37 a.m. local time on Monday, with its epicenter off Sarangani province near Kablalan. At least 45 people were dead, 17 were missing and 630 were injured. More than 2,100 aftershocks followed, some reaching magnitude 6.4, and the quake ranked among the most powerful to hit the Philippines in half a century.

The damage stretched far beyond the grocery store. More than 3,100 houses, roads and bridges were damaged, along with 100 government buildings, making it harder for local authorities to secure unstable sites and keep rescue crews out of harm’s way. General Santos International Airport was damaged and remained closed except for government and military aid flights. More than 25,000 people were still displaced and living in 45 government-run emergency shelters, while 71,525 consumers were without power in parts of the quake zone.

Schools and public services were also under strain. About 6,000 public school buildings in quake-hit provinces had to be assessed before classes could resume, and the United Nations said more than 3.2 million learners were affected as classes were suspended in over 6,200 public and private schools pending safety inspections and structural checks. The quake hit on the first day of the new school year for millions of students in Mindanao, deepening the disruption across South Mindanao.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. pledged 50,000 pesos for each bereaved family as the government moved to blunt the human and political fallout. The scale of the losses, the repeated aftershocks and the battered infrastructure have left rescuers working against a landscape that keeps changing under their feet, turning the emergency response into a prolonged battle to prevent more deaths.