User:Emilyhg.371/2019 Visayas earthquake

Introduction
A 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck the islands of Visayas in the Philippines on April 23, 2019.

Geography
The Visayas Islands are located in the central part of the Philippines consisting of seven main islands that make up its land. Their topography is full of tall mountains and large plains that provides easy cultivation of sugarcane and rice. Their location in the Visayas sea provides excellent fishing opportunities for the island to obtain more food in a sustainable way. Common produce also grown here includes maize, coconuts, bananas, tobacco, and various root crops. The location of these islands is one of the most seismically active due to the subduction zones the Philippines sits on. The multiple trenches indicate the many subduction zones around the Philippines creating these large magnitude earthquakes.

First Hand Accounts
This earthquake had an estimated 172 aftershocks that were felt in many different places around Samar. These ranged from magnitudes of 1.6 to 4.6 with slight shaking as seen from the commenters.

“''It was really very strong. at first it was moderate until 5 seconds it appears to be every infrastructure are shaking, including the basketball court that was beside our house, and even while running outside the house to look for safer ground. i myself can”-'' English translation of someone who was in Calbayog, reporting what was felt during the earthquake in their location.

Aftershocks could also be felt all the way in India according to this commentor: "I was sleeping it is 1:50am in India and i was awakened by the earthquake. My neighbors ran outside and waited for sometime until it the earthquake stopped."

Damages
At least 16 people died due to the properties not being structurally intact and with good earthquake prevention built into them. Many of the buildings near the epicenters were not built properly to withstand higher magnitude earthquakes. A total of 245 houses were damaged, with one of them fully destroyed. Along with the damaged buildings, a lot of power outages occurred the day of the earthquake but was then restored that same day.

 Sources