Mindanao execs worried as Agaton-spawned floods, slides may cause more damage

Residents ride a boat as they paddle along a flooded village brought about by heavy rains in the outskirts of Butuan City, Agusan del sur province, in southern island of Mindanao on January 13, 2014. Twenty-two people have been killed and nearly 200,000 others evacuated from floods and landslides that hit a southern Philippine region still recovering from a deadly 2012 typhoon, the government said January 14. AFP PHOTO/Erwin Mascarinas

DAVAO CITY – Officials in at least two Mindanao provinces ravaged by floods and landslides due to a low pressure area that has been lashing the region since last week voiced fear of even more damage and death after the weather disturbance intensified into a tropical depression on Friday.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) raised storm signal No. 1 over seven Mindanao provinces in light of Tropical Depression Agaton.

Pagasa said the depression was moving at a speed of five kilometers per hour and was affecting the provinces of Surigao del Norte including Siargao Island, Surigao del Sur, Dinagat Province, Agusan del Norte, Agusan del Sur, Davao Oriental and Compostella Valley.

Agaton’s center was located 260 kilometers southeast of Guiuan, Eastern Samar or 130 km Northeast of Hinatuan, Surigao del Sur, at noon Friday.

A Pagasa satellite picture showed that the low pressure area, which was then moving slowly toward the Visayas, split into two on January 15. The tail eventually developed into another weather disturbance and by 6 p.m. that day had grown even larger than the main body.

The detached tail continued to hover over Surigao City and the phenomenon triggered anew light to moderate rains in many areas of Mindanao, including Southern Mindanao, which had experienced brief sunny weather that day.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Agusan del Sur, the San Francisco Water District (SFWD) said its forest rangers found that cracks on Mt. Magdiwata that they had discovered in 2011 have grown in size.

Water district officials said the cracks were located 400 meters above the lowlands in San Francisco and warned that a large part of the town could get buried if a landslide occurred there as a result of more rains brought by Agaton.

The water district’s watershed monitoring team reported that the soil structure in the area has started “shifting down” and the foundation was growing “weaker.”

“Because of these cracks, surface water percolates directly to the structure of the soil making it susceptible to landslide,” an SFWD report said.

The team said the team noted that some of the naturally growing Falcatta trees near the site of the cracks had almost been uprooted because their foundations had fallen down the 45-degree slope.

“We are not sowing a spectre of doom but if this will not be acted upon at once, it is more likely that a disaster is just waiting to happen,” SFWD general manager Elmer Luzon said.

“We have alarmed (sic) concerned government agencies and the local government about possible landslides but it seems the response has been lukewarm,” Luzon added.

He said the SFWD had offered to donate P1.2 million to the local government for the construction of barriers on the landslide prone areas of the mountain.

Aside from the growing cracks, Luzon said, the SFWD team also discovered landslides in several areas around seven villages near the mountain, including one that buried the SFWD intake box on Tinggangawan creek.

In Davao Oriental, Governor Corazon Malanyaon said the weather disturbance that battered her province for nearly a week sunk a part of a hill in the village of Old Macopa in Manay town.

“The sunk part is equivalent to height of two coconut trees,” she said.

Malanyaon appealed for more help for her province, especially from the national government, as it has barely started to recover from the devastation brought by Typhoon Pablo in December 2012.

Due to mudslides and floods triggered by the low pressure area, she said the two villages have been isolated from the town center and access to them was very difficult.

The bridges connecting the municipalities of Caraga, Baganga, Cateel, and Boston were also damaged and workers distributing relief goods to affected families have to walk or cross raging rivers.

“We are the most affected by the LPA with 15 deaths and now, here comes Agaton,” Malanyaon said.

(Reports from Chris Panganiban, Judy Quiros, Germelina Lacorte and Allan Nawal, Inquirer Mindanao)

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