SULTAN KIDARAT, Maguindanao , Philippines - Flash floods, spawned by heavy rains in the hinterlands, forced thousands of villagers here to evacuate to higher grounds yesterday.
This was the third mass evacuation here in two months due to heavy flooding.
Elements of the Army’s 603rd Infantry Brigade helped evacuate residents using their 6 x 6 trucks and bancas borrowed from villagers in nearby marshlands.
“We were forced to abandon our homes when the rampaging waters became waist-deep. We were so worried we could be drowned so we ran toward a nearby national highway,” mechanic Ariel Damsil told The STAR.
The evacuees came from barangays criss-crossed by the Simuay River and its tributaries, which all spring from forests in the hinterland Maguindanao towns of Matanog, Buldon and Barira.
The government has been trying to divert Simuay River’s downstream flow to a beach facing the Moro Gulf in Sultan Mastura, Maguindanao.
But the excavation of the flood cut-off route has been slow and there are landowners who refused to have their lands covered without appropriate compensation.