Flash floods’ damage in South placed at P80 M

COTABATO CITY — Authorities have initially placed at P80 million the damage on crops, infrastructure and livestock wrought by Monday’s flash floods that hit hinterland towns in North Cotabato and Maguindanao.

Rescuers were still searching for at least five residents of Alamada, North Cotabato who went missing when their houses along the riverbank were swept away by rampaging waters from the forested boundary of Maguindanao and North Cotabato.

Alamada Mayor Ernesto Concepcion said rescue and rehabilitation efforts have been stalled due to the destruction of bridges linking communities which were swept by flash floods spawned by three days of torrential rains.

"We need bulldozers and other road-building equipment right now. We need military choppers to transport food, clothing and medicines for (villagers now isolated)," Concepcion told reporters.

The flash floods destroyed more than a hundred hectares of corn farms in the Alamada barangays of Mirasol, Kamansi, Barangiran, Raradangan and Buluyagan.

Nine barangays have also been ravaged by flash floods in the adjoining town of Libungan.

"The corn and palay crops destroyed by the flash floods were (ready) to be harvested," Libungan Mayor Ronaldo Pader said.

Pader said policemen recovered the body of a girl, believed to be a Alamada resident, in a river in one of the flooded barangays.

Relief workers said the flash floods displaced some 1,540 families in Alamada and Libungan.

Pader and Concepcion both blamed loggers using permits issued by the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao for the flash floods.

The ARMM government has long been the subject of criticisms for its wanton issuance of logging permits for supposedly watershed areas close to North Cotabato.

The functions and powers of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources have been devolved to the ARMM as part of the autonomy package provided under its amended charter, Republic Act 9054.

Lita Enok, director of the ARMM’s Office of Civil Defense, said nine barangays in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao were also inundated as rivers springing from the forested surroundings of Camp Abubakar in the northeastern part of the province, overflowed.

Loggers, using permits issued by the DENR-ARMM, have also been cutting trees in the vicinity of Camp Abubakar, former bastion of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and now a peace zone where various rehabilitation projects are underway.

Sultan Kudarat Mayor Datu Tucao Mastura said the flash floods destroyed some P30 million worth of harvestable palay and corn crops in the nine barangays.

Mastura said more than 2,000 villagers were forced to evacuate.