‘Half of Bacoor under water’-city disaster office

SAN PEDRO, Laguna-Almost half of Bacoor City in Cavite is submerged under water Monday as swollen rivers continue to rise, according to disaster authorities in the city.

Richard Quion, the chief of the city’s disaster risk reduction and management council, said flood ranging from 18 to 24 inches to as high as six feet have hit the villages of Maliksi 1, 2 and 3; Talaba 1 and 2; Zapote 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5; Aniban 1 to 5; Niog 1 to 3; Panapaan 1 to 8; Talaba 1 to 7; Mambog 4 and 5; and Ligas 1, Real 2, Banalo, Salinas, Tabing-dagat, Camposanto and portions of Molino.

“That’s almost half (of Bacoor),” Quion said by phone from an elf truck used for rescue operations.

All routes are impassable to light vehicles, leaving only the Aguinaldo Highway and the Molino Boulevard open to traffic.

Cars and smaller vehicles were stranded, with only the provincial buses and six-by-six trucks of the rescuers surviving the flood.

Torrential rains continued to fall in the province and nearby areas Monday.

Quion said all three major river systems in Cavite— Zapote River, Bacoor River, and Imus River — were swollen and its tributaries continued to overflow.

No casualty was reported as of 10 a.m. Monday even as “hundreds” of families “and still counting” have begun evacuating their homes since Sunday evening, he said.  “But we’ve been receiving several reports from pregnant women calling for help,” he said.

All hospitals in the city, he said, remained operational.