The ground beneath Mindanao shook with a force that different seismological services measured differently - some at 7.8, some at 8.2, some at 7.0 - but for the people on the island, the difference between those numbers meant nothing. It meant only one thing: walls falling, roads cracking, and a night in which no one lies down at home.

So far at least 15 deaths have been confirmed, twelve of them in the Soccsksargen region in the south of the Philippines, and over 129 injured in that area alone. The numbers are provisional - after a powerful earthquake they almost always rise in the following days, as rescuers reach the places the first hours can't get to.

The quake struck at a depth of just 10 kilometers - shallow, which means devastating at the surface. By morning, as many as 138 aftershocks had been registered, with magnitudes from 1.3 to 6.7. For two neighbors, the Philippines and Indonesia, tsunami warnings were issued; the highest measured wave reached 1.4 meters, after which Indonesia lifted its alert.

For the Balkans, which remember their own devastating earthquake all too well - Skopje 1963, and then tragedies that aren't so distant - news like this is no exotica from the other side of the world. It's a reminder that nature doesn't negotiate, and that the only thing that really decides how many people survive isn't the strength of the earthquake, but how solidly built was what collapsed on top of them.