‘It’s sunny but water continues to rise…’

LITTLE BOY BLUE. A search-and-rescue team from the Philippine Air Force brave neck-deep waters to bring a little boy to safety in Nueva Ecija province on Friday. PHOTO BY LT. CMDR. GEORGE BLANCO OF 5051st SRS, PAF

Marilao, Bulacan—Residents of the coastal towns of Bulacan and Pampanga provinces on Friday continued to call for rescue teams as floodwaters rose higher despite the sunny weather.

The release of water from six major dams is being blamed for the unprecedented flooding in Central Luzon.

Some residents of Candaba, Arayat, Apalit, San Luis, San Simon and Masantol towns in Pampanga and of Calumpit and Hagonoy in Bulacan had been awaiting rescue atop dikes, on rooftops and in the second floors of their or their neighbors’ houses since Wednesday, according to Josefina Timoteo, director of the Office of Civil Defense in Central Luzon.

Reports gathered by the Inquirer placed the level of floodwaters in various parts of Bulacan, Pampanga, Tarlac and Nueva Ecija at between a meter and 3.048 meters (or between 3 and 10 feet).

Typhoon “Pedring” exited the Philippines on Wednesday after pummeling Luzon with powerful winds and bursts of heavy rain starting late Monday.

Rising without letup

Timoteo said that from a helicopter, the region seemed like “a basin full of water.”

“Although it’s sunny, the water is continuing to rise without letup,” Maj. Gen. Jessie Dellosa, chief of the military’s Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom), told the Inquirer by telephone.

Dellosa traveled to the town of Paombong, where he joined Bulacan Gov. Wilhelmino Sy-Alvarado in assessing the situation.

Calumpit and Hagonoy are now the top priority of disaster response teams and government agencies. On Dellosa’s request, two Huey choppers from the Air Force began rescue missions in the two towns on Thursday night, Timoteo said.

‘They’re insane’

Recah Trinidad, Inquirer columnist who has family in Hagonoy, was raving mad. He put the blame squarely on the release of water from the Ipo and Angat Dams. “The dam people don’t know what they’re doing. They’re insane.”

Dellosa said Pampanga River started to swell on Wednesday.

While the waters receded quickly in the past, this time the flooding is “expected to persist for several days,” the Pampanga River Basin Flood Forecasting and Warning Center said in a bulletin on Friday.

Rio Grande de la Pampanga

Pampanga River, with headwaters in Nueva Ecija, is where the waters from dams and more than 30 rivers drain before flowing into Manila Bay. Old folk refer to it as “Rio Grande de la Pampanga,” where the ancient communities of the old Pampanga region began before the Spanish colonizers divided it into provinces.

At the center of the region is this river and the provinces of Pampanga and Bulacan.

Timoteo said Pedring was worse than Tropical Storm “Ondoy” and Typhoon “Pepeng” combined. The last two, which struck Central Luzon in September and October 2009, destroyed P2.515 billion worth of crops, livestock and fisheries.

Pedring alone left the agricultural sector with losses reaching P4.191 billion, excluding Pampanga. The damage to Nueva Ecija’s palay crop was valued at P2.867 billion.

The typhoon came as farmers were preparing to harvest.

Evacuation order ignored

Using trucks or rubber boats, at least 20 rescue teams from national government agencies, the military, police, local governments and the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) roamed the flooded towns to ferry residents to evacuation centers.

Many went with the rescue teams but others chose to ignore Alvarado’s order of forced evacuation, Dellosa said. He said certain residents preferred to stay in their homes than in the evacuation centers that were usually congested and without adequate toilets and water supply.

“The option Governor Alvarado and I are considering is to bring the residents food packs,” Dellosa said. “But they really should leave.”

Capt. Jovily Carmel Cabading, Nolcom spokesperson, said the Army, Navy and Air Force had been asked to allocate personnel, equipment and rubber boats for rescue missions in Bulacan and Pampanga.

Cabading said that “all available water assets and rescue teams from the tri-service in Manila” were sent on Thursday night to the towns of Candaba, San Simon and Calumpit, and that the “special forces” had been in Hagonoy as of Thursday morning.

Mix of factors

Rodolfo Santos, a resident of Hagonoy and head of the Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (MDRRMC), said the flood spawned by Pedring was the worst to hit his town.

Santos said the disaster resulted from a mix of factors: strong rains over the Sierra Madre mountain range on the eastern boundary of Central Luzon where the watersheds are located; the release of water from Angat, Ipo and Bustos Dams, and high tide.

He described the flood in all 26 villages of Hagonoy as “lampas tao” (beyond an average person’s height).

The depth of the flood is between 2.43 and 3.04 meters (between 8 and 10 feet) in the villages of Iba, Iba Ibayo, Palapat, Carello, San Juan, San Isidro, San Miguel, Sta. Monica, San Pablo, San Pedro and Abulalas, Pugad and Tibagin, Santos said.

He said relief teams had reached only four barangays.

The male members of a number of families usually stay to guard their houses and belongings, while the women and children move to relatives’ houses with upper floors, he said.

Life-saving dikes

In Masantol, Pampanga, which is across from Hagonoy, residents of Barangay Iscundu, Baco, Alauli, Balibago, Bagang, Sagrada, Nigui and Sapang Kawayan reported that they have run out of food and water, said Tarik Soliman High School principal Rowena Quiambao.

In search of safe ground, the residents climbed the dike and went to an evacuation center built by Concern, a nongovernment organization. But they cannot move out because the edge of a road on the Calumpit side is in deep flood, Quiambao said in a text message.

“People are using what remains of their phone batteries to get help,” she said.

Pampanga Gov. Lilia Pineda has asked Dellosa to lend the provincial government a helicopter to bring food and water to some 250 families trapped in Masantol.

Former Masantol Vice Mayor Bajun Lacap, who is among those trapped, said: “It is ironic that those who lost their fishing grounds when the mouth of Pampanga River was widened and deepened some 15 years ago are now suffering the worst floods ever.”

In San Simon town, thousands of residents secured themselves and their belongings atop the Arnedo dike, which was built in the 1930s by the US colonial government. They ignored the advice of Pineda and local officials to leave as early as Wednesday, according to MDRRMC head Benjamin Santos.

“They do not want to go to the evacuation centers because there are so many [rules] there. They are not allowed to smoke, to play cards. They said they feel more relaxed on top of the dikes,” Santos said.

Not another drop

In Nueva Ecija, Reynaldo Puno, operations manager of the Upper Pampanga River Integrated Irrigation Systems, said water would not be released from Pantabangan Dam because its reservoir level on Friday was at 205.9 meters above sea level, or still 15.1 masl from spilling level.

“We assure residents in the catch basins in Nueva Ecija and Pampanga that we are not adding any drop to the floods… in their areas and will not do so until we reach near spilling level,” Puno said.

He said the dam had been preventing rainwater from northern Nueva Ecija and parts of Nueva Vizcaya and Aurora from cascading to low-lying areas in the southern part of the province, and that the waters that flooded the cities of Cabanatuan and Gapan and the towns of Sta. Rosa, San Antonio, Jaen, San Isidro and Cabiao had come from three rivers downstream of the dam.

In Pangasinan, the release of water from San Roque Dam in San Manuel town starting Thursday noon did not trigger the anticipated floods in communities along the Agno River, according to police officials.

At least 16 towns—San Manuel, Asingan, Rosales, San Nicolas, Alcala, Bautista, Sta. Maria, Tayug, Villasis, Urbiztondo, Mangatarem, Bayambang, San Carlos, Aguilar, Bugallon and Lingayen—had been braced for possible flooding. With a report from Anselmo Roque, Inquirer Central Luzon