Quake chaos: Residents walk past a destroyed church in Bohol on October 16, a day after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck central Philippines
Photo: CNS/Erik De Castro, Reuters
MANILA, Philippines: Like many others in the town of Jetafe in the Philippines, Fr Chito Lozada and his staff at Santo Nino parish did not go inside their homes on October 15, they remained outdoors.
They feared aftershocks that continued after a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck earlier in the day.
“(The aftershocks are) really coming quick,” Fr Lozada, who directs the social action office of the Talibon diocese in Bohol, said.
Although they were not nearly as intense as the powerful quake, he said they had made people of the diocese, which includes Carmen, the site of the epicentre, jumpy.
Fr Lozada said people were still “so afraid”.
“They are making their own evacuation centre in the place where they think they are safe, without edifices, without posts,” he said.
“They themselves are gathered there.”
Fr Lozada said parishioners from Santo Nino converged mostly in the town plaza and they were not budging.
The 43-year-old priest was born and raised in Bohol, a popular tourist destination, and he said this was the most severe earthquake he had ever experienced.
Fr Lozada said he could barely keep from falling over while the temblor shook the ground.
He said houses were flattened and several centuries-old churches in the diocese suffered partial damage, with some facades and belfries crumbling to the ground.
The Philippines’ Department of Social Welfare and Development announced it had a few thousand food packages to distribute, and it was buying more provisions for the anticipated rise in the number of evacuees.
The Civil Defence office said more than 2.8 million people had been affected in the three worst-hit areas.
One of those areas, Cebu City, north-west of Jetafe, also sustained partially collapsed buildings, broken roads and damaged shopping malls.
Cristy Layan works at a mall restaurant in Cebu. She said the mall, which suffered cracks, was open for just a few hours on October 16 before officials ordered it closed again so a more thorough structural inspection could be done.
Bishop Leonardo Medroso of Tagbilaran told the Asian church news portal ucanews.com that Masses in affected areas would be celebrated in makeshift tents.
He said it was up to the priests whose parishes were damaged “to improvise”.
Bishop Medroso said all 58 churches in Bohol were damaged.
Spokesman for Cebu archdiocese Monsignor Achilles Dakay told ucanews.com some churches there cancelled Masses as a “precautionary measure”.
Masses were being celebrated outside churches as authorities assessed the fitness of the structures.
In Cebu City, the earthquake damaged the Basilica Minore de Santo Nino (Basilica of the Holy Child), the oldest church in the Philippines and home to one of the country’s most important religious icons.
Archbishop Socrates Villegas, who will become Philippine bishops’ conference president on December 1, told clerics to focus their attention on the victims, not collapsed churches, reported ucanews.com
CNS
