NCotabato flash flood damage at P90M

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines - Officials have pegged to no less than P90 million the initial estimate of crops destroyed by flash floods that repeatedly struck North Cotabato from July to early August 2013.

Worst hit by the floods were more than a hundred barangays in North Cotabato’s Pikit, Pigcawayan, Tulunan, Kabacan, Carmen, Matalam, President Roxas, Antipas, Mlang ang Midsayap towns.

Most of the affected towns are located along the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Marsh.

The vast Liguasan delta, surrounded by Central Mindanao’s adjoining North Cotabato, Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat provinces, is a geographical catch basin for dozens of rivers that spring from surrounding forested hinterlands, including the vast watersheds in Bukidnon and South Cotabato.

Calamity reports supplied via email by office of North Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza and the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council indicated that the damages to corn and rice crops in the affected areas alone reached P87 million, based on estimates by local government units and municipal agriculturists.

Some P3 million worth of farm animals and newly planted assorted orchard seedlings have also been reportedly swept away when big rivers straddling through the perennially flooded North Cotabato towns swelled and overflowed due to incessant rains.

North Cotabato has been under state of calamity since a powerful earthquake rocked Carmen town in early June this year, which destroyed more than a hundred houses, government school buildings two bridges that connect portions of the Sayre Highway linking the province to Bukidnon in Region 10.

More than 5,000 villagers have also been dislocated by armed conflicts between rival factions in the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Matalam (MILF) town in the second district of the province from May to late July 2013.

The leaders of the feuding groups, one led by Dima Ambil of the MNLF and the other by the MILF’s Noah Sabel, have agreed to reconcile last week through the efforts of Mendoza and local officials in Matalam.

More than 2,000 families have also been dislocated by a spate of attacks by the brigand Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters in the towns of Pikit, Aloesan and Midsayap during the middle of July until middle of August 2013, according to documents obtained by The Star.