Heavy flooding hits Maguindanao, North Cotabato

DATU ODIN SINSUAT, Maguindanao, Philippines  – Dozens of barangays here and in Maguindanao’s adjoining Kabuntalan and Northern Kabuntalan towns are submerged in water as Butilen River in Barangay Taviren overflowed as carpets of water hyacinths blocked its downstream flow.

More than a dozen towns in the first and second districts of Maguindanao and in North Cotabato have also been inundated when big rivers crisscrossing the two provinces swelled due to heavy rains in surrounding hinterlands since Monday.

 Lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, executive secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said they need more heavy equipment, since the backhoe that they are using is not enough to clear the river of carpets of water hyacinths.

Soldiers from the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, 5th Special Forces Battalion, and volunteers from different barangays have been trying to declog the river of water hyacinths for three days now.

A 13-year-old boy, Mujahad Dalagan, drowned while evacuating their belongings from their flooded village in Pagalungan town.

He said ARMM’s social welfare department said there are some 34, 491 families displaced by floods in 14 towns in Maguindanao and are now in different evacuation sites.

The affected towns are located within the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Marsh, a catch basin of big rivers from Bukidnon and forested mountain ranges in the provinces of North Cotabato, Sultan Kuda­rat, and Davao del Sur.

The Liguasan Marsh drains at the Moro Gulf in the western coast of Cotabato City via the Rio Grande de Mindanao, which straddles through low-lying towns in the first district of Maguindanao.