4 women die in Basilan flashfloods

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - Four women drowned in rampaging flashfloods that swept through some 50 villages in low-lying areas in Basilan early this week, officials announced Saturday.

The Regional Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao identified the victims as Helen Ignacio, Tessie Samson, Flordeliza and Judy Anne, both surnamed Sebastian, all of Barangay Bohe Yakan in Lamitan City.

More than 900 families in Baluno District at the border of Lamitan City and Isabela town have also been rescued and relocated to higher grounds by responding members of the Army’s Special Forces units in Basilan when rivers crisscrossing the area overflowed, inundating villages.  

Lamitan City Vice-Mayor Roderick Furigay told The Star via mobile phone that the four flood fatalities were swept by rampaging waters that flowed from the banks of a big river straddling through the Bohe Yakan area.

Furigay said more than a dozen other villages in surrounding barangays have also been hit by flashfloods.

The ARMM’s executive secretary, Laisa Alamia, said the region’s Humanitarian Emergency Assistance and Response Team (HEART) had initially distributed to flood victims in Lamitan City a total of 1,500 relief packs containing food and hygiene kits donated by the Australian Agency for International Development.

Alamia said the office in Mindanao of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had also supplied the HEART with relief provisions, a big bulk of which was dispersed to evacuees in Zamboanga City.

The RDRRMC-ARMM said the floods spawned by torrential rains in many parts of the autonomous region early this week displaced 11,649 families, or a total of 58,845 individuals.

No fewer than 70 houses in Basilan, a component province of ARMM, were destroyed by flashfloods too, according to reports reaching Alamia’s office in Cotabato City.

The HEART had earlier provided food and medical supplies to 10, 970 families in Zamboanga City that got dislocated by the three-week hostilities there between government forces and followers of Nur Misuari.

Alamia said the HEART had also facilitated, with the help of the governors of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, the return to the three island provinces of 3,558 traveling folks stranded in Zamboanga City due to the closure of its seaport for three weeks as part of the measures imposed to contain the trouble instigated by Misuari’s men.