Heavy downpour floods 5 Lanao Norte towns

LALA, LANAO DEL NORTE –– Five towns of Lanao del Norte were flooded after heavy downpour started early dawn Monday prompting authorities to order the evacuation of residents living near creeks and rivers here.

The flooded towns were Kapatagan, Lala, Sapad, Salvador, and Sultan Naga Dimaporo, according to Roy Secuya, operations officer of the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office.

Secuya said the Salug River overflowed, thus submerging Salvador and Sapad and the irrigation dikes of Lala and Kapatagan Valley.

Part of Sultan Naga Dimaporo was also affected by the heavy rains brought by Tropical Storm “Falcon,” he said.

Disaster management bodies in the five towns had been mobilized with the help of the police and soldiers, Secuya said.

Lt. Colonel Rolando Orengo, commanding officer of the 5th Mechanized Infantry Battalion, said he had deployed troops to Sapad, Salvador, and Kapatagan to rescue civilians and support the towns’ disaster operations.

The swollen Maranding and Butadon rivers in Kapatagan inundated villages along the national highway and interior barangays. The national highway and rice lands were similarly inundated.

Claudio Tuastumban Jr., officer-in-charge of the disaster operations in Kapatagan, said “the rescue in Kapatagan was divided into teams. One of the teams was dispatched to sitio Palayan of Poblacion Kapatagan to rescue three women trapped in their house by the flood.”

Tuastumban said the evacuees have been brought to safer grounds in their respective barangays and fed with soup and noodles. Others took refuge in a gymnasium.