Rescuers in Davao de Oro. Photo from the Facebook page of the Province of Davao de Oro.
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 02 February) – The Office of Civil Defense (OCD)-Davao reported five persons were confirmed dead while two others were still missing due to flooding and landslides in Davao de Oro province.
During Kapihan sa Philippine Information Agency (PIA) on Friday, OCD-Davao director Ednar G. Dayanghirang also said seven persons were injured from flooding and landslides triggered by the torrential rains brought by the trough of the low pressure area in several parts of Davao and Caraga regions.
As of 2:37 p.m., the OCD-Davao was yet to release the details of the casualties as well as the injured and missing persons in Davao de Oro.
In a post on social media, the Municipality of Maragusan in the province announced that its responders retrieved the cadavers of Ananias Andoy, 56, Virginia Buhian, 59, and Jerlyn Lada, 12, on Thursday who were trapped in a rubble due to a landslide last Wednesday.
Dayanghirang said that as of Friday, the OCD-Davao recorded 278,072 individuals affected by the bad weather in 262 barangays across the region.
Out of this total, he said there are still 44,720 individuals who are staying in 183 evacuation centers across the region.
He said that the OCD-Davao is still consolidating reports from the different local government units to determine the estimated cost of damage to infrastructure and agriculture.
But he said that the region’s severely hit provinces were Davao Oriental, Davao de Oro, and Davao del Norte, which remain under a state of calamity since the shear line weather system affected Mindanao around the third week of this month.
He added that various local and national government agencies, particularly the Department of Social and Welfare Development, have been directed to distribute food items to the affected families.
He said the OCD-Davao plans to hold a regional flooding dialogue in the hopes of coming up with solutions to the perennial problem confronting different towns across the region.
He also urged the LGUs to utilize the geohazard maps of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau-Davao to determine areas that are prone to landslides in their respective jurisdictions. (Antonio L. Colina IV/Mindanews)
