A village built to provide safe homes for survivors of Super Typhoon Haiyan more than a decade ago was among the hardest-hit by an earthquake late Tuesday in the Philippines.
At least 10 people died in that village alone, said Wilson Ramos, an emergency worker with a local disaster response unit, among what the authorities said were at least 69 people confirmed dead across Cebu Province, where the 6.9-magnitude quake was centered.
“This area was built to safeguard storm survivors and people from high-risk zones,” Mr. Ramos said. “I cannot yet say whether those who died were also Haiyan survivors; more than 10 years have passed. But this village was intended to give them a new home.”
With dozens of other people unaccounted for, according to the Philippine Office of Civil Defense, rescuers on Wednesday fanned out to try to find survivors trapped under the rubble. Gov. Pamela Baricuatro of Cebu placed the entire province, roughly 350 miles south of Manila, under a state of emergency.
Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro, a deputy administrator for the civil defense office, said at a news briefing that the response efforts were centering on the northern tip of Cebu’s main island, including Bogo City, where the village for Haiyan survivors was established in 2014.
Funded by a charity, the village was intended to provide 200 “disaster resilient homes” for survivors of Haiyan, known in the Philippines as Super Typhoon Yolanda, which devastated the country in 2013, killing more than 6,000 people. It was also meant to relocate residents from coastal danger zones.
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