The Mayor of a southern Philippine town that was devastated by a powerful earthquake pleaded on Thursday (June 11, 2026) for helicopters to transport food to stave off hunger in several landslide-isolated villages.

The 7.8 magnitude offshore quake, one of the strongest to hit the Philippine archipelago in a half century, struck on Monday (June 8) off the southern province of Sarangani and has left at least 47 people dead and injured 688 with 31 still missing.

More than 45,000 people remained displaced, about half in emergency shelters, after the quake damaged more than 12,600 houses in farming towns and cities. Many were still too traumatized to return home due to aftershocks, provincial officials said.

Sarangani reported 20 dead from the quake, the highest toll from the affected provinces, mostly due to a landslide that buried houses in the coastal town of Glan, according to the government’s Office of Civil Defence, which deals with major disasters.

Glan Mayor Victor James Yap said power has not been restored to his province and 10 of 31 villages in his town of more than 100,000 people remained inaccessible mostly due to landslides. He asked the government to immediately deploy air force helicopters to deliver food and other aid to the stricken areas.

“We need food and water but it’s difficult to transport them to some of our villages which remain isolated,” Mr. Yap told DZMM radio network. “Choppers are needed to transport food because people there are already very hungry.”

A key access road to the town has been reopened and will allow the delivery of fuel as early as Thursday (June 11), but the town remained without power and cellphone services were still spotty, according to Yap.

Most of the deaths from the quake were caused by falling debris from collapsed buildings and landslides in Sarangani, the coastal city of General Santos, and the outlying provinces of South Cotabato and Davao Occidental.

Two swimmers drowned and one remained missing off General Santos after being swept out to sea shortly after the quake hit. Waves of up to 1.4 metres (4.6 feet) above tide level were measured in the country’s south and smaller waves washed ashore in Indonesia and Palau and as far away as southern Japan.

The earthquake was one of the strongest to hit the country since an 8.1 magnitude quake and tsunami on August 17, 1976, that killed about 8,000 people.

The Philippines is often hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of seismic faults around the ocean.

Rescuers in the southern Philippines pulled a body from the rubble of a collapsed supermarket on Wednesday (June 10, 2026), as the death toll from a major earthquake climbed to 46.

The 7.8-magnitude tremor just off the coast of Mindanao on Monday (June 8, 2026) brought down buildings, triggered landslides and set off tsunami warnings across a swathe of the southern island.

Joey Deluvio, 39, was one of two employees at a supermarket in General Santos City that has been the focus of recovery efforts despite the constant threat of aftershocks.

Life-detecting equipment had traced a “weak pulse” earlier in the operation, local rescuer Michelle Chua told AFP on Wednesday (June 10, 2026), but “when they got to the body… there were no signs of life”. “Deluvio’s body was found pinned between two beams,” Mr. Chua added.

“The National Disaster Agency raised the death toll to 45 on Wednesday (June 10, 2026), while the number of people missing jumped dramatically from four to 17. However, the figure for fatalities did not include Deluvio,” the Civil Defence Office confirmed.

“Most of the additional dead were from Davao Occidental province, and most had been killed in landslips or collapsing buildings,” Civil Defence Official Rafaelito Alejandro said in a radio interview.