At least seven people were killed after two powerful offshore earthquakes struck near Manay town in Davao Oriental, southern Philippines, on October 10, 2025, prompting hours of tsunami warnings and coastal evacuations across Mindanao. The first quake hit at 9:43 a.m. Philippine time with a magnitude 7.4, followed about nine and a half hours later by a 6.8 event along the same sector of the Philippine Trench, according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) and international monitors.
Authorities reported fatalities from falling debris, landslides and medical emergencies triggered by the shaking. A preliminary tally cited by the Associated Press listed two hospital patients who suffered heart attacks, a resident struck by debris in Mati City, three people killed in a landslide in Pantukan, and another death in Davao City. Hundreds were injured as buildings were damaged and panic sent residents into the streets. The second major shock reinforced fears of further instability as inspections and rescue work were still underway. See AP’s latest reporting for details on casualties and damage patterns.
Phivolcs located the first mainshock about 48 kilometers northeast of Manay at a depth of about 23 kilometers and said it was tectonic, not volcanic, in origin. The agency issued a “destructive tsunami” warning minutes after the quake and lifted it roughly four hours later once gauges showed only modest sea-level changes. A wave of about 30 centimeters was recorded in Tandag City along the Caraga coast, and authorities urged residents to remain off beaches during aftershocks. Phivolcs’ technical primer outlines the sequence and expected hazards from aftershocks in the coming days and weeks.
Indonesia also issued alerts for parts of North Sulawesi and nearby islands because of the shared basin, while the U.S.-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center cautioned that hazardous waves were possible across coasts within 300 kilometers of the epicenter. Warnings were later lifted after monitoring confirmed the threat had subsided, Reuters reported.
Two major shocks, one fault zone
Seismologists classify the October 10 sequence as a “doublet” — two large earthquakes occurring close in time and location on the same fault system. In practical terms, that means stress changes from the first rupture can bring neighboring segments closer to failure, raising the odds of another strong event soon after. Phivolcs said both shocks were associated with the undersea Philippine Trench east of Mindanao, a deep plate boundary where the Philippine Sea Plate dives beneath the Philippine Mobile Belt.
The shaking lasted tens of seconds across Davao Oriental and adjacent provinces and was strong enough to cut power in some areas, damage public buildings, and force evacuations of schools and hospitals while engineers checked structural integrity. Local authorities suspended classes in Davao City for assessments and began restoring disrupted transmission lines, according to coverage by the Washington Post.
Tsunami alerts tested — and lifted
Minutes after the first quake, coastal towns sounded sirens and moved residents to higher ground. The precaution was warranted: trench earthquakes can vertically displace the seafloor and push columns of water, even if the resulting wave heights are modest. In this case, sea-level stations in eastern Mindanao registered minor fluctuations rather than destructive surges, and the warning was cancelled after sustained monitoring. Phivolcs emphasized that people should stay away from beaches during strong aftershocks because localized sloshing and currents can still be dangerous.
The rapid issue-and-lift cycle also served as a real-world drill of the Philippines’ multi-agency alerting system, which has been upgraded in recent years to speed messages to local disaster offices, radio networks, and mobile phones. The experience will feed into post-incident reviews of how quickly communities evacuated and where communications held up under stress.
Response and immediate needs
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said national agencies were coordinating search-and-rescue and damage assessments, with local governments opening evacuation centers and clearing roads blocked by rockfall and debris, Reuters reported. Emergency teams prioritized accounting for residents in hillside barangays vulnerable to landslides and in low-lying coastal zones where currents remained unpredictable after the warnings ended. Relief groups focused on temporary shelter, potable water and power restoration for clinics handling trauma cases.
Phivolcs warned that aftershocks will continue for days to weeks and that additional hazards — especially landslides and liquefaction in saturated soils — remain possible. That advice informs how engineers will stage building inspections and how authorities will time phased returns of evacuees to the most affected neighborhoods.
Frequent quakes, rising risk awareness
The back-to-back quakes hit less than two weeks after a deadly magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck off northern Cebu on September 30, which killed more than 70 people, according to Reuters. Taken together, the events underscore the country’s exposure along the Pacific “Ring of Fire” and the challenge of protecting densely populated coastal communities from both strong ground shaking and secondary hazards such as tsunamis and landslides.
For readers in the region and overseas, this story matters because the Philippine Trench generates some of the Western Pacific’s most consequential subduction earthquakes, and performance of early warnings, building standards and evacuation plans in Mindanao offers lessons for other trench-facing coastlines across Asia and the Pacific.
Experts say preparation is as much social as it is technical. That means clear signage to evacuation routes, regular school and workplace drills, quick structural triage of hospitals and bridges, and ensuring that older masonry buildings — often the first to fail — are retrofitted where feasible. It also means improving the redundancy of communications so alerts reach fishing communities and remote barangays that may have only patchy mobile coverage.
Phivolcs’ primer notes that aftershocks can trigger rockfall on steep slopes and cause ground subsidence in saturated lowlands — a pattern seen repeatedly in past Mindanao quakes. Residents in such areas have been advised to avoid riverbanks and unstable hillsides until engineers finish assessments and rain forecasts are factored into landslide risk maps.
Authorities will publish updated damage and casualty figures as inspections progress. For continuing updates, consult Phivolcs’ event page and official advisories, and see our ongoing coverage on Globally Pulse News. Technical background on the earthquake sequence and tsunami alerts is available through Phivolcs’ primer and reporting by the Associated Press.
