Manilla — Two strong earthquakes struck the central Philippine just hours apart, damaging houses and roads and knocking out power.
There were no immediate reports of casualties, officials said Sunday.
The second, stronger quake, with a magnitude of 6.2, struck at 7:01 p.m. local time Saturday and was set off by movement in the Philippine Fault, a major fault line running from the country's mountainous north to the south, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said.
It was strong to enough to topple old buildings but hit sparsely populated rural areas, said government seismologist Ishmael Narag.
The first quake, with a magnitude of 5.5, occurred at 1:47 p.m.
Damage was reported in Masbate, one of at least seven central provinces where the earthquakes were felt. Masbate lies about 380 kilometres southeast of the capital Manila.
The Office of Civil Defence in Manila reported the second earthquake caused an empty Muslim day-care centre beside a mosque to collapse in Masbate's capital city Masbate. The quake also knocked down a number of electric posts, causing power outages in the city, officials said.
"We were watching an HBO movie when we heard this booming sound, then the ground started to shake. Power suddenly went out and we heard people yelling in the neighborhood," fireman Randy Ramos said by telephone from Masbate city, describing the second quake.
Mr. Ramos said he and his companions rushed out and prepared their fire trucks, just in time to respond to an explosion of a transformer on an electric post.
In Masbate's hard-hit town Dimasalang, the earthquake tore down a wall in the police station, cracked house walls and damaged cement roads, including a newly built one, the OCD reported.
It said government seismologists and engineers were inspecting damage in other parts of the town Sunday.
The mountainous Philippine archipelago of 7,100 islands sits on at least four major faults, and mild earthquakes are common. A magnitude 7.7 earthquake in 1990 killed nearly 2,000 people on the main island Luzon.
