Search teams digging through the wreckage of a flattened supermarket in General Santos City are now being fed by a mobile kitchen sent by the Office of the Vice President (OVP), which positioned its Kalusugan Food Truck at the disaster site this week.
The unit was set up close to the ruins of the Save More building in Barangay Calumpang, one of the locations hit hardest when a magnitude 7.8 quake ruptured beneath southern Mindanao on Monday. Around 150 responders — among them rescuers, medical staff, and assorted support personnel drawn from different agencies — are stationed at the site, according to the OVP.
In its Tuesday statement, the office framed the deployment as one piece of a wider relief operation run out of its Disaster Operations Center and carried out on the ground by the Southern Mindanao Satellite Office, working alongside local government units, response teams, and partner agencies.
“The Office of the Vice President recognizes the dedication and sacrifice of our frontliners who continue to serve under difficult and hazardous conditions,” the OVP said.
Officials indicated they would keep watching conditions in the affected zones, signaling a willingness to scale up assistance as relief and recovery work proceeds.
The quake that prompted the response struck off Sarangani at 7:37 a.m. Monday and was first logged at magnitude 7.0 before seismologists revised it upward, according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. Tribune reported the confirmed death toll had reached 38 by Tuesday afternoon, with close to 500 injured, four people unaccounted for, and 14 buildings destroyed in General Santos City alone.
