'A very sad day for Iloilo'
Photo by Florence Hibionada
The rampaging waters and angry winds spared no one.
Entire villages were submerged with water as hundreds of thousands of Ilonggos woke up Saturday with water inside their homes.
A family of eight in Barangay Napnapan in Tigbauan town 24 km north of here was swept by waters on Saturday. Their remains, including those of children, were recovered yesterday, said Mayor James Excel Torres.
In Janiuay town 34 km northwest of Iloilo, patients and staff of the Janiuay District Hospital swam through the ceiling to escape the waters that rapidly entered the hospital.
One of the 29 patients, Patrocino Defensor, 92, died of a heart attack. She was dependent on an oxygen machine that was also destroyed in the flood.
Patients in two other district hospitals were transferred to neighboring hospitals after the flood seriously damaged or destroyed hospital equipment, said Dr. Judy Ann Trompeta-Dumayas, chief of the provincial hospital management service.
In the capital town of San Jose in Antique, 70 families remained trapped as of yesterday in Barangay Dorog, said Zoilo Tubianosa, provincial administrator and acting governor.
The water rose so high that officials had to open valves of the Moroboro Dam in Dingle town, around 42 km north of here, to prevent it from overflowing. The dam supplies irrigation systems in the area.
The City Schools Division of the Department of Education yesterday declared the suspension of classes for at least three days in Iloilo City because schools are being used as evacuation centers. Many students are also among the victims.
The flooding damaged roads and bridges estimated to reach at least P500 million, according to the PDCC. Crops worth hundreds of millions of pesos were also destroyed with an estimated 70 percent of total planted areas affected by flooding.
Iloilo City and some areas of the neighboring town of Pavia have traditionally experienced flooding during storms and continuous rains because these are located at the convergence point of the Tigum and Aganan Rivers, the main tributaries in Iloilo.
But officials were stunned and overwhelmed by the magnitude and extent of the calamity. They were at a loss to explain why areas which have never experienced flooding before became pools of water overnight.
“This is a very sad day for Iloilo. We have never experienced flooding like this before,” said Iloilo Gov. Niel Tupas Sr. during a meeting of the Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council (PDCC).
“We are overwhelmed. Almost all of our barangays are underwater. We have never experienced this extent of flooding and it pains us to think that we cannot reach and help the victims,” said Mayor Arcadio Gorriceta of Pavia, one of the hardest hit towns.
Sta. Barbara Mayor Isabelo Maquino said that in previous storms, waters reached only ankle-high even if the province was placed under Storm Signal No. 3.
“Our people were not trained to handle this kind of calamity,” said Maquino.
Maquino said they were caught by surprise by how fast the water rose and because it came from in land. “We were monitoring the rise of our rivers and we did not expect that the water will come from the mountains.”
Local government units and agencies also did not have enough equipment and personnel to handle distress calls and were not prepared to handle the magnitude of the flooding.
Board Member Jett Rojas said the incident was a “wake up call” for all Ilonggos especially officials and agencies.
He blamed the continued deforestation as the cause of the flooding.
Rojas said a portion of the calamity fund should be allocated for reforestation projects and to develop disaster preparedness of local government units.