Landslides, floods isolate Eastern Samar
Leyte towns also flooded
By Vicente Labro, Joey A. Gabieta
Visayas Bureau
First Posted 16:37:00 02/18/2008
TACLOBAN CITY, Philippines -- Landslides and floods caused by nine days of incessant rain have isolated most areas of Eastern Samar since Sunday affecting nearly 9,000 families.
Eastern Samar Governor Ben Evardone said on Monday that the province became isolated Sunday evening after landslides blocked a section of the Wright-Taft road in the middle of Samar island that links Eastern Samar to the province to Samar.
Evardone said he had informed President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of the situation in his province.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development said the continuous rain, caused by a low pressure area in Northern Mindanao and a cold front, has affected 8,973 families in the province, nearly half from the town of Dolores.
The affected families, meaning their homes or farms were flooded, came from the towns of Dolores, (4,050 families or 24,300 people, General MacArthur (2,556 families or 15,336 people), Jipapad (1,328 families or 7,968 people), Maslog (802 families or 4,812 people) and from Borongan City (237 families or 1,422 people).
Representative Teodulo Coquilla of the lone district of Eastern Samar also reported that farmlands in his hometown of Oras and the municipalities of Dolores, Can-avid, Jipapad and Taft in the northern part of the province were flooded after rivers swelled.
Floods also hit Borongan City and Llorente, Coquilla said.
He added that many villagers in far-flung areas especially those residing near rivers had evacuated to higher ground or mountains.
"The situation (in the province) is very bad," he said in a radio interview.
As of Monday, Coquilla said heavy rains continued to pour.
Based on initial reports received by Evardone's office, about 20,000 hectares of farmlands in four villages of Balangkayan town were flooded. These were the villages of Lugo, Kaisawan, Cantubi, and Bangon.
A farm-to-market road was also washed out while two wooden bridges in Llorente town were damaged.
In Giporlos, Mayor Mateo Biong reported that the floods destroyed crops worth about P500,000.
Elsewhere in Eastern Visayas, the continuous rainfall also caused flooding in Silvino Lobos town in Northern Samar and in the towns of Palo, Tanauan, Tolosa, Alangalang and Dagami, among others, in Leyte.
Leyte Governor Jericho Petilla said the provincial government had two rescue boats on stand-by since Friday but there were no reports of major evacuation in the province except that some people got stranded due to floods in areas near a river.
The flooding affected nearly 400 families from Tacloban City, Palo and Dagami towns in Leyte province.
Angel Sia, maintenance engineer of the Department of Public Works and Highways regional office, reported that, as of 11:30 a.m. Monday, half of the South Samar Coastal Road was already passable after the removal of landslide debris in the village of Coticot, Giporlos, Eastern Samar.
But the Macabot Bridge in General MacArthur town, the Wright-Taft road and the Tacloban-Catbalogan route remained impassable, Sia said.
He said work on Macabot Bridge, which leads to the City of Borongan, could not be done because the area was still under water, and boulders blocking the Wright-Taft road had not been removed yet.
Sia said that all the roads in Leyte, Biliran and Northern Samar were passable.
There was no report of flooding or landslides in Southern Leyte, he added.
Exactly two years ago, on February 17, 2006, a big landslide hit the village of Guinsaugon in St. Bernard town, burying in mud the entire village and killing around 1,000 people. Two weeks of continuous rain preceded the disaster.
On Friday, the Office of Civil Defense in Eastern Visayas advised local officials in the region to activate their disaster coordinating councils following reports of floods and landslides.
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