Hundreds flee floods in Cotabato City

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Heavy rains since Friday swelled big rivers criss-crossing the city and surrounding towns and submereged villages that have barely been drained from floods that hit the same areas more than a week ago.

Hundreds of villagers in low-lying areas here were forced to evacuate to higher grounds after tributaries of the Rio Grande de Mindanao and the Allah River, which both drains into the Moro Gulf at the western coast of the city, overflowed following a heavy downpour.

More than 30 riverside villages in Maguindanao and North Cotabato have also been flooded.

The Autnomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM)’s regional disaster risk reduction and management council (RDRRMC) has dispatched workers to validate the reported evacuations in Maguindanao towns.

The office of Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu last week distributed more than 10 truckloads of relief supplies to hundreds of Moro and non-Moro villagers dislocated by earlier floods.

The provincial government of Maguindanao has sought the help of the police and the Army’s 6th Infantry Division in monitoring the water levels in waterways straddling through many low-lying areas in the province.

Several towns in the first and district of Maguindanao are located along the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Marsh, a catch basin for rivers from the North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Bukidnon provinces.