More sawmills needed for coco lumber in Leyte, Samar

FILE PHOTO

SAN PEDRO CITY, Laguna—Thousands of coconut trees knocked down by Supertyphoon Yolanda still have to be retrieved and processed into usable lumber before they rot or, worse, clog the waterways and cause flash floods.

Since November, government agencies have been processing and converting the fallen trees into lumber to build temporary shelters and repair the schools and public buildings destroyed by the typhoon.

The Forest Products Research and Development Institute (FPRDI), which has an office in Los Baños, Laguna, and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, have been operating at least three mobile saw mills in Tacloban City in Leyte and Marabut in Samar.

Each saw mill produces an average of 1,000 board feet of lumber a day, said FPRDI forester Francisco Lapitan.

“But it’s still not enough. There were just too many, thousands, of fallen trees,” Lapitan said in a phone interview on Sunday.

The Philippine Coconut Authority, on its website, said Yolanda, considered the strongest in 2013, hit mostly the coconut producing provinces in Visayas. The storm, it said, damaged 3,058,948 coconut trees in seven provinces.

FPRDI director Dr. Romulo Aggangan said even a fallen coconut tree could still be of use, specially its outer portion, which is a cheap but sturdy construction material commonly used for houses in Laguna and Quezon provinces.

“But (the lumber) has to be dried out and treated with chemicals so it won’t grow fungi or attract insects,” he said.

Aggangan said the DENR planned to purchase five more mobile sawmills, while Lapitan said the United Nations Development Program was also poised to give 12 units for the storm-hit areas.

Aggangan said they were “reinforcing” the Visayas rehabilitation in the coming months, when summer is much favorable for wood processing.

He said it was also best they finish before the onset of the wet season due to the possibility of flash floods.  In 2011, hundreds of people in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan cities were killed and crushed under logs that were swept down denuded mountains during a flash flood.

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