Disaster drills helped prevent more deaths when powerful quake hit the southern Philippines

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine officials said Friday that years of disaster-preparedness drills helped prevent a larger casualty toll when one of the strongest earthquakes in 50 years struck the south and left 55 people dead with 31 others missing.

The 7.8 magnitude offshore quake, which struck Monday off Sarangani province, injured about 1,120 people and displaced more than 45,000 people, about half them still in emergency shelters, after the quake damaged more than 12,600 houses across farming towns and cities.

Many were still too traumatized to return home because of strong aftershocks, officials said.

Days after the earthquake hit, more videos of the chaotic moments have been posted on social media showing horrified crowds witnessing the collapse of small buildings, and flag-raising ceremonies turning chaotic when the ground started to shake on the first day of school after a long summer break.

Students are seen on videos screaming in panic, but staying seated or standing still outside school buildings, with some covering their heads with their hands as teachers admonished them to calm down.

One video, which has gone viral on Facebook with millions of views, showed dozens of grade-schoolers screaming and breaking into tears as they sat on a tree-ringed school ground, which visibly swayed them from side to side. A tin roof shed nearby later collapsed with a loud thud, prompting many to dash away, but were asked by teachers to return and stay seated.

The grade school in the coastal town of Malita in Davao Occidental province reported no injuries from the quake.

“This incident serves as a reminder of the importance of earthquake preparedness and the value of regular disaster response drills,” the Mahayahay elementary school said in a statement.

Teresito Bacolcol, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, said years of disaster-preparedness drills helped people anticipate and brace for extreme events like Monday’s quake, one of the strongest to hit the archipelago in a half-century.

He said that it was also fortunate that the quake hit at 7:37 a.m., a few minutes before work and classes were to start indoors.

“It’s good that our efforts to educate people on what to do when earthquakes hit somehow paid off,” Bacolcol told The Associated Press.

He expressed concern, however, over the collapse of some buildings that he said should have withstood the powerful quake, if construction standards based on the country’s building code were followed.

Ednar Dayanghirang, director of the Office of Civil Defense in a quake-hit region of about 5 million people, said that regular disaster-preparedness drills helped reduce casualties in many ways, including by preventing deadly stampedes.

“We required all school principals to take one-day courses on incident management, then they appointed disaster-response teams among teachers to deal with earthquakes, tsunamis,” Dayanghirang said. “They listened and they learned.”

The Philippines, one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, is often hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of seismic faults around the ocean.

Residents take shelter in a field at a municipal hall in Sarangani province, Philippines, Wednesday, June 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Basilio Sepe)

People walk past a collapsed building following an earthquake in Sarangani province, Philippines Wednesday, June 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Basilio Sepe)

Workers inspect a damaged mall in General Santos, southern Philippines, Thursday, June 11, 2026, following Monday's powerful earthquake. (AP Photo/Basilio Sepe)

A woman washes clothes along a damaged pathway in General Santos, southern Philippines, Thursday, June 11, 2026, following Monday's powerful earthquake. (AP Photo/Basilio Sepe)

People on motorcycles pass by a collapsed structure after an earthquake in General Santos, Philippines on Monday, June 8, 2026. (AP Photo)

LONDON (AP) — Artist David Hockney, whose paintings of pools shimmering in the Los Angeles sunshine became icons of 20th-century art, died Thursday, his publicist said. He was 88.

Hockney was born in the north of England but lived much of his life in Southern California, making its sun-drenched suburban views a major motif.

Later in life he returned to Europe, finding renewed inspiration in the wooded hills of his native county of Yorkshire and the fields and trees of France’s Normandy region. He became one of the U.K.’s most treasured artists, his works selling for record prices at auction.

Historian Simon Schama said that “the popularity and durability of David Hockney’s art, through all his shape-shifts and restlessly inventive experiments, are really no mystery.”

“His work is admired — loved is not too strong a word — by the millions who, worldwide, flock to see it because it presupposes an expectation of pleasure,” Schama wrote in an essay accompanying a 2025 Hockney exhibition in Paris.

Hockney’s publicist, Erica Bolton, says he died a few weeks short of his 89th birthday.

With his trademark round glasses and bleached-blond hair, Hockney was a well-known figure in the swinging British and American art scenes of the 1960s, even before he reached the age of 30. His paintings were just as distinctive, many of them creating a dreamlike world of patterned light bouncing off water and windows, and human forms rendered in flattened, simplified shapes in matte acrylic paint.

“I’m excited every day,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1979. “London has lots of dreary parts but I never find anything dreary in Los Angeles.”

Hockney was born July 9, 1937, in Bradford, a large industrial city whose chief export was woolen textiles. He spent his first two decades there before going to London’s Royal College of Art. He made an impact even before his graduation, and art dealer John Kasmin took him into his stable of artists in 1961.

FILE - Artist David Hockney after unveiling the bottle design for the 2014 vintage wine of Château Mouton Rothschild in London, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)