Deadly Philippines quake permanently alters Mindanao coastline

Arsenio Butil Jnr fell to his knees and began to pray when last week’s deadly 7.8-magnitude earthquake began shaking his home on the coast of the southern Philippines.

When he opened his eyes, he saw a once-familiar shoreline changing in real time, with swathes of previously submerged coral suddenly pushing above the waterline.

The June 8 quake, driven by a shifting of the nearby Cotabato Trench, toppled buildings, triggered landslides and killed at least 76 people on the southern island of Mindanao.

The tectonic forces at work also thrust chunks of the island’s coastline upwards in a phenomenon known as “coastal uplift”, leaving stretches of shore unrecognisable to families who have spent their whole lives there.

During a visit to the area, fishing boats that had once been at the water’s edge could be seen on the wrong side of a wall of jagged, now-dead coral stretching for kilometres in both directions.