A team of experts from the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) has been deployed in Davao de Oro and its immediate vicinity to look into the series of earthquake events in the province in the past few days.
In a post on its official social media page on Monday, March 13, Phivolcs said its Volcano Team will conduct information dissemination and collect water samples from Leonard Kniaseff Volcano—a stratovolcano between the municipalities of Maco and Mabini in Davao de Oro.
These measures will be taken to determine if the earthquake events in Davao de Oro are related to volcanic activity.
(Courtesy of Phivolcs / Facebook)
Since March 6, Phivolcs has detected a series of “light” to “moderate” earthquakes that struck the same area in the province of Davao de Oro.
Among this series of earthquakes was the 5.9-magnitude earthquake that struck at 2:02 p.m. and was followed by the 5.6-magnitude tremor at 4:47 p.m., both on March 7.
Both quakes originated in New Bataan, Davao de Oro.
Shallower temblors hit the same area hours earlier as Phivolcs recorded moderate quakes on March 6, measuring 4.9-magnitude and 5.3-magnitude that occurred at 12:49 a.m. and 4:43 a.m., respectively.
Phivolcs said 1,385 earthquakes with magnitudes ranging from 1.5 to 5.9 were recorded as of March 11.
It noted that 32 of these earthquakes were felt.
Phivolcs initially said the earthquakes were “series” of events, which means the adjacent active faults are causing the sequence of events with almost the same magnitude.
It pointed out that Davao de Oro is one of the seismically active regions in the country because of the presence of active faults that include the East Compostela Valley, West Compostela Valley, Central Compostela Valley, Nabunturan, Caraga River, and Mati Segments of the Philippine Fault and the Central Mindanao Fault.
There are other nearby local faults, some of which may be covered by recent deposits, that could be sources of small-to strong-magnitude earthquakes, it added.