Traffic in flooded Lanao highway back to normal as floodwaters recede

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Low-lying stretches of the Secretary Narciso Ramos Highway in Lanao del Sur, flooded from noontime Friday until Sunday dawn due to heavy rains, had been reopened to traffic.

Lanao del Sur Gov. Mamintal Alonto Adiong Jr., and the municipal governments in Malabang and Balabagan separately announced at noontime Sunday, September 15, that vehicles, cargo trucks and motorcycles are again plying the route after floodwaters in portions that got inundated had subsided.

“Traffic is back to normal. The local government units there, the police, the military and barangay officials are now clearing portions of the highway from mud and other debris,” Adiong, chairman of the Lanao del Sur Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, said.

Local officials had also reported that Jehana Cali Alikan, 12, Janah Tantao Palawan, 12, Alyssa Airoden Sadain, 15, and the seven-year-old Sittie Harah Manioba, who died instantly after a tree felled by strong winds hit the tricycle carrying them in Barangay Cabsaran in Malabang last Friday, had all been buried in keeping with Islamic tradition of burying the dead within 24 hours after death.

Alikhan, Palawan and Sadain were students of the Al-Falah Qur'an Learning Centre, a government-accredited Islamic School in Malabang.

Local officials in Malabang told reporters on Sunday that the office of Adiong in Marawi City, which is the provincial capital, and employees of the Ministry of Social Services and Development-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (MSSD-BARMM), helped facilitate the burial of the four victims.

The incident left three others, the tricycle driver Napi Abdulazis, 18, Abdulwaffy Mauntol, 17, and the nine-year-old Abdulwaffy Mauntol, badly injured, now confined at the Doctor Serapio Montañer Memorial Hospital in Malabang, a seaside municipality in the second district of Lanao del Sur.

The office of MSSD-BARMM Minister Raissa Jajurie and Lanao del Sur’s Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office had also separately provided the families of the four fatalities with relief supplies and other essential provisions, according to Malabang municipal officials.

Adiong and Jajurie had also assured to help in the medication of the injured Abdulazis and the Mauntol siblings, now recuperating in the hospital.