Flash floods displace hundreds in Basilan

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - Hundreds of residents from several villages in  Isabela, Basilan are now cramped in makeshift evacuation centers, dislocated by rampaging chest-deep flash floods that struck Tuesday following two days of incessant rains.

Relief workers dispatched by the office of Isabela Mayor Cherry Akbar are now attending to the needs of the evacuees.

Vice Governor Haroun Al-Rashid Lucman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, who is ARMM’s concurrent regional social welfare secretary, said his subordinates are now cooperating with the office of Basilan Gov. Jum Akbar in providing relief services to the evacuees.

Isabela is inside Basilan, a component-province of ARMM, but the town is not under the political and administrative jurisdiction of the autonomous region.

Akbar’s office is located in Isabela, the capital of Basilan before residents of six other towns in the island province voted in favor of the inclusion of their communities into the expanded ARMM during a plebiscite in August of 2001.

Worst hit by the flashfloods were villages in Isabela’s Baluno District, traversed by rivers that spring from hinterlands in the southwest of Basilan.

Relief workers, led by Lilia Bucoy of the provincial social welfare office, and Board Member Yusoph Alano had relocated the displaced Baluno  residents to makeshift evacuation sites in high grounds overlooking their flooded villages.

The rampaging floodwaters that hit low-lying areas in Isabela destroyed more than a hundred houses, according to initial reports reaching the office of Basilan’s provincial governor.

The floods also swept away a pontoon bridge connecting the center of Baluno to Tabuk area, also in Isabela.

Villagers were promptly rescued by responding members of Army Special Forces units in Basilan and the provincial police command.

Some of the evacuees from Baluno have relocated to houses of friends and relatives in nearby Sta. Clara in Lamitan City, the new capital of Basilan.

Lamitan City Vice-Mayor Roderick Furigay said rivers criss-crossing their 45 barangays also swelled and overflowed after three days of continuous rains that started Monday.