One dead, thousands displaced as floods hit Central Mindanao

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - A 20-year-old female college student  drowned while thousands were displaced by flashfloods that struck parts of Central Mindanao over the weekend, reports from government relief entities said.

Richiel Empas, an education student of the University of Southern Mindanao, was undergoing survival training with companions in a local mountaineering club at a shallow portion of a river in North Cotabato’s Magpet town when rampaging waters from hinterlands, spawned by heavy rain hours before, swept her downstream.

Companions of Empas managed to rescue and bring her to a hospital, but attending doctors declared her dead on arrival.

The victim belonged to a mountaineering group undergoing survival and life-saving skills training in preparation for next year’s Mt. Apo trek season.

Some 2,000 villagers in Maguindanao’s Shariff Aguak town were forced to relocate to higher grounds in the northeast of the municipality Saturday night when rivers straddling through the area swelled and overflowed following heavy rains, inundating 13 villagers.

Even the town proper of Shariff Aguak, located in the second district of Maguindanao, also got inundated, according to Mayor Zahara Upam Ampatuan.

Ampatuan said LGU workers are now attending to the needs of the flood victims.

“This is...first...in the history of our municipality. The town proper is located on a high ground yet, it got flooded too,” Ampatuan said.