Cotabato towns flooded; relief operations ongoing

COTABATO CITY – Heavy downpours the past four days have caused big rivers criss-crossing low-lying areas in Shariff Kabunsuan and Maguindanao to overflow, again inundating villages struck last month by flashfloods spawned by typhoon Frank.

Worst hit by the floods are the towns of Datu Piang, Sultan sa Barongis, Rajah Buayan, S.K. Pendatun, all in Maguindanao.

Datu Piang Mayor Samer Uy, chairman of the Municipal Disaster Coordinating Council, led local officials yesterday in distributing relief goods for the flood victims procured jointly by their local government unit and the office of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Gov. Datu Zaldy Ampatuan.

“More than 5,000 of my constituents were displaced by the flood in their communities. Many of them are now housed in relief sites inside school campuses,” Uy said in the Maguindanaon vernacular.

Low-lying villages in at least 22 of the 27 barangays in Cotabato City have also been flooded when tributaries of the Allah River and the Rio Grande de Mindanao overflowed following heavy rains in surrounding hinterlands from where the two waterways spring from.

Mayor Ramil Dilangalen of the newly-created Northern Kabuntalan municipality in Shariff Kabunsuan said almost all of the villages under his jurisdiction are flooded again.

“This inundation of our villages came less than two weeks after flashfloods struck many parts of our town brought about by typhoon Frank,” Dilangalen said.

Ampatuan, who is also the presiding chairman of the Regional Disaster Coordinating Council, said he has tasked the region’s social welfare and health departments to focus on the rehabilitation of displaced families in the flooded towns.