The dramatic footage showed Dante Pianar, his face and upper body caked in cement, lips bloodied and tattooed right arm twisted and pinned beneath the remains of his collapsed house in Bogo city, near the epicentre of Tuesday night's 6.9-magnitude quake that killed at least 69 people.

"My arm is broken... please help me. We were hit by the earthquake. I hope you can help me, friends, I am trapped," the 28-year-old local government employee pleads in the local Cebuano language, in a scene that unfolded around midnight shortly after the quake struck.

The footage was uploaded early Wednesday to his Facebook account, "Dan Soy Vlog", and has since been viewed at least 3.8 million times.

In the video, two relatives can be seen frantically pulling away slabs of concrete and steel bars pinning down Pianar's entire lower body.

At one point, they tug at his blue shirt in a failed attempt to free him.

His wife, who was also rescued, Leonie Grace Bolambao, who is two months pregnant, told AFP the couple had gone to bed early and were buried under the rubble in their bedroom.

Pianar was taken to hospital in Cebu city to treat his broken arm.

Bolambao, an English teacher, suffered minor injuries and later returned to her parents' undamaged home.

"I fainted and couldn't respond for a long time. When I got to the hospital, I couldn't even speak. I was just in shock. I lost my ability to talk," she said.

"Dante's arm can't move anymore because a wall fell on him. We never expected our house to collapse. Our home is badly damaged, nothing's left of it."

Rescues like Pianar's played out across Bogo and nearby towns on Wednesday.

At the collapsed Condor Pension House in downtown Bogo, around 200 people watched and waited for hours, including the husband and father of two missing victims, as firefighters tried to winch up a person found beneath the rubble.

A woman was later recovered dead, but the man's wife and child remain missing.

"We're racing against time. We are talking about life here. As responders, as rescuers, we are hoping that we can bring them out alive," senior fire officer Erwin Castaneda told AFP.