Flashfloods flatten Cotabato `rice granary'

KIDAPAWAN CITY — About 3,000 families in Kabacan, Cotabato relocated to higher grounds after rivers crisscrossing the municipality overflowed following heavy downpours on Tuesday, flooding villages and farmlands.

Residents around the campus of state-run University of Southern Mindanao near the town proper of Kabacan had been hit worst by the flooding. Kabacan is touted as the "rice granary" of Cotabato.

Flood-stricken residents were rescued before dawn Wednesday by emergency responders from the local government unit of Kabacan and the Cotabato Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office.

Kabacan Mayor Evangeline Pascua Guzman told reporters their municipal calamity response contingent and relief workers from the office of Cotabato Governor Emmylou Taliño Mendoza are now attending to the needs of evacuees.

Kabacan is surrounded by large rivers that springs from upland towns in the adjoining Bukidnon and Cotabato provinces and drains at the nearby 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta.

“There was recurring heavy rains around in mountain ranges not too far from Kabacan before these floodwaters spread around,” Guzman told reporters. 

Floodwaters from around the USM campus had reached rice fields along the sides of the Cotabato-Kidapawan Highway and in nearby Barangay Kayaga by noontime Wednesday.

The Cotabato provincial government said it would augment the relief supplies of the Kabacan LGU for the flood victims.