BOAT RIDE | Randy Cabildo, a councilman of Barangay San Miguel in Calumpit, Bulacan, rides his small boat to visit a resident in the sunken sitio of Malindig, in this photo taken on May 7, 2023. (File photo by CARMELA REYES-ESTROPE / Inquirer Central Luzon)
CALUMPIT, Bulacan, Philippines — Residents of two villages in this town have been dealing with floodwater inundating their homes all year round that showed no sign of receding even during the summer months.
The three days of intermittent strong rains last week only deepened the almost 2-meter deep floodwaters that have been inconveniencing about 1,000 residents in four sitios (subvillages) in Barangays (villages) Meysulao and San Miguel for years now.
Alberto Oraa, 68, from Sitio Nabong in Barangay Meysulao, had to buy a boat to bring to school his 18-year-old senior high school daughter Althea and ferry her home every day, as their house is submerged in an almost 2-m deep flood for about six years now.
His wife Zenaida said the recent rains and high tide further increased the floodwaters in their place.
‘Floating’ sitio
Oraa is just one of the around 400 residents in Sitio Nabong who were forced to live in a “water world” condition all year round.
“We do not have a choice, we don’t have any relatives to move to or money to build a house in safer sitios,” Oraa told the Inquirer in an interview on May 9.
At Sitio Malindig in adjacent Barangay San Miguel, Alma de Leon and her family left their house in 2010 and temporarily sought shelter in upper Sitio Dike. She is waiting for the completion of a road dike in Malindig so that they can go back to their place.
Only two of the five sitios in San Miguel — Danga and Dike-River Side — are safe from floods as the three other sitios of Bagong Barrio, Malindig, and Cabu are affected by the year-round 1.5- to 2-m deep stagnant floodwaters.
Completion of the road dikes in Sitios Malindig and Cabu and portions of Bagong Barrio is underway, according to San Miguel Barangay Captain Dave Braian Sambilay, whose village council began the infrastructure projects more than five years ago to remedy the year-round flooding.
Sambilay said there are 2,153 families in all the five sitios in San Miguel and only 10 percent from sitios Dike and Danga were not affected by flooding during rains and typhoons.
But 200 families, with about 600 individuals, in Cabu, Malindig, and Bagong Barrio have been living in stagnant water for more than 10 years now.
Catch basins
Sambilay, in an interview on May 7, said the four subvillages in Calumpit and Sitio Cadwang Tete in the boundary town of Macabebe in Pampanga province have been submerged in floodwater for a decade now.
The four sitios in Calumpit are the catch basins of floodwater from Pampanga and from some other areas of Bulacan, he said.
Sambilay said since the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991, when tons of ashes and debris covered the lowlands, the topography of San Miguel and Meysulao had drastically changed. The rice farms of the two villages had since disappeared and are now underwater.
“I was in elementary school then, these sitios up to Nabong are farmlands. They would be flooded during the rainy days but the farmers can still plant rice. But when Mt. Pinatubo erupted, their areas became unsuitable for rice production,” he said.
Sambilay said waters brought by rains, typhoons, and high tide that flows in toward the sitios have not receded.
Dike
The village has pumping stations, but they’re not adequate to drain the water in flooded areas.
“What we need here is a road dike similar to what the national government [had] earlier built in adjacent areas. These dikes will prevent the entry of high tide waters and the waters from Pampanga and even from tributaries in Bulacan,” he said.
Sambilay told the Inquirer he has started drafting a joint resolution with Barangays Meysulao and Cadwang Tete addressed to President Marcos to appeal for funds to build the dike.
San Miguel Councilman Randy Cabildo said they backed the resolution initiated by Sambilay, as they considered it their last hope to end the flooding in their villages.
Manuel Lukban, head of the Bulacan Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, said in an interview on May 8 that the flooding in the villages of Calumpit started 15 to 20 years ago when the town failed to benefit from the dike projects of the national government.
Lukban affirmed Calumpit is geographically the catch basin of waters from Pampanga and Bulacan and that a dike project of the national government years ago should have resolved the flooding.
However, there were also residents in Calumpit, backed by local officials, who had prevented the project because of threats that their houses and properties would be covered in water if the dike was built, he said.
Lukban said during strong rains and typhoons, the families in the four sitios have been their priority for forcible evacuation.
He said there were efforts to relocate the affected households but they declined to leave, with some residents saying they had become used to living in stagnant water.