Philippine Quake Kills at Least 108 : Disaster: A magnitude 7.7 temblor hits Manila and the main island. About 1,000 people are reported trapped.

A powerful earthquake rocked Manila and the main Philippine island of Luzon on Monday, killing at least 108 people, flattening hotels and churches, triggering landslides and destroying roads and bridges north of the capital, relief officials said early today.

At least 38 of the dead were high school and college students killed when a six-story building collapsed in Cabanatuan City, 40 miles north of Manila and close to the epicenter of the quake, officials said.

Officials said they expect the death toll to grow since more than 1,000 people were reported trapped inside two severely damaged luxury hotels and a government building in the mountain resort of Baguio. Roads and telephone lines to the city were cut, and the airport was closed.

“We are expecting many more casualties to come in,” civil defense spokeswoman Emilio Tadeo said.

The U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo., assigned the quake a magnitude 7.7. The first tremor hit about 4:30 p.m. and lasted more than 30 seconds. Aftershocks rocked the capital as late as six hours later.

Rescue efforts were hampered by cut phone lines, power blackouts and lack of equipment. Different government agencies kept their own casualty counts, and estimates of the death toll ranged as high as 179. Hundreds were reported injured.

In Manila, numerous buildings suffered cracked walls or shattered windows, but there were only 10 confirmed deaths in the city by early today. Dozens were treated at city hospitals for injuries caused by flying glass and falling debris.

The heaviest damage was in the densely populated towns of central Luzon, the country’s rice-growing heartland. Radio stations reported numerous bridges, churches, homes and government buildings damaged or destroyed. Scores were reported killed in stampedes from theaters, markets and schools.

Rescue teams worked through the night in Cabanatuan City, capital of Nueva Ecija province, where the six-story Christian College of the Philippines building accordioned into rubble as the quake rolled through the town of 80,000. The reinforced concrete building was the tallest in town.

“I thought it was the end of the world,” said Juan Rivera, 48, a security guard at the school. “Everybody panicked.”

He said screaming students jumped from the windows into the concrete courtyard as the floors collapsed one by one. Bonifacio Yabut, 34, another guard, said he was able to catch four girls who jumped but others disappeared into the building as it folded into itself.

“It sounded like a train roaring,” he said. “There was smoke everywhere. It was awful, awful.”

As tearful friends and families watched and waited nearby, rescue crews used sledgehammers, acetylene torches and shovels in a grisly search for the dead and injured. At 2 a.m., they carried three mangled bodies from the crumpled concrete.

“We could hear people moaning and screaming before,” said army Col. R. M. Ong, who coordinated the operation. “Now it’s more quiet. And it’s very difficult to reach them. The building is very unstable.”

A lifeless hand stuck out from between two giant slabs of concrete, and a woman’s crushed torso was visible between the lower floors. Red Cross workers set up an intravenous drip to another victim, whose body was hidden in the mass of broken cement and twisted steel.

Dr. Benjamin Morales, director of the city’s largest hospital, said 38 students were pronounced dead at area hospitals, but an unknown number of others were taken directly to funeral homes. He said 96 had been injured in the collapse.

“It’s remarkable that anyone survived,” he said, surrounded by beds that overflowed onto the driveway and front lawn at the hospital. “It was a major disaster.”

Initial reports suggested a far greater calamity took place in Baguio, a mountain resort popular with foreigners about 110 miles north of Manila. Up to 150 people were believed trapped in the damaged Hyatt Terraces there, and 150 otherswere reported inside the Nevada Hotel, officials said.

“The new wing of the Hyatt, all the floors are down,” civil defense spokeswoman Tadeo said. “Only the old wing is standing. The Nevada Hotel is completely collapsed.”

Military officials in Manila said up to 800 people were trapped in a government building in the Baguio Export Processing Zone. A soldier at the U.S.-run Camp John Hay recreation center in Baguio said that at least seven buildings had collapsed in the city, including a theater, an elementary school, a church and the public market.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Stanley Schrager said helicopters had airlifted seven badly injured people from Baguio to the U.S. Clark Air Base. He said the embassy was arranging to send four civil engineering teams, totaling more than 200 personnel, to Cabanatuan City and Baguio.

“We’ve also sent doctors, dogs, digging equipment, floodlights and medicine,” he said.

The quake was more powerful than either last October’s San Francisco earthquake, which was a magnitude 7.1, or the earthquake in Iran last month that was at least a magnitude 7.3.

President Corazon Aquino ordered military and civil defense officials to begin rescue and relief operations at dawn today. She also ordered schools closed until damage can be assessed.