AN independent environment and climate change campaigner has advised area residents to stay on higher grounds with urban flooding now a serious concern in Cagayan de Oro City.
Task Force Macajalar Bencyrus Ellorin even encouraged the residents to consider moving to higher grounds as there is no other option left than to adapt to downtown floods.
The uptown barangays such as Lumbia, Indahag, and Balubal, where housing projects abound, and other elevated villages are now the safest place to live in the city, according to Ellorin.
“We have no other choice. We have to seek higher grounds literally if we want to survive,” Ellorin said.
Heavy rainfall for weeks left Puerto, Cugman, FS Catanico, and Bugo as the most affected barangays in Cagayan de Oro with two deaths reported, including security guard Artemio Gonzalez who was drowned in Zone 5, Lower Bugo while trying to save his motorcycle.
In Bukidnon, five persons were buried by a landslide in Sitio Mabuhay, barangay San Luis of Malitbog town on Monday afternoon, October 17.
The victims were identified as couple Lucrecio Lauronal, 54, and his wife Angelina, 52, and local government workers Nerio Talines, 50; Raffy Simprota, 34, and Jordan Achas, 30.
Already, four bodies were retrieved by the police in the ongoing search and rescue operation.
Weather specialist Luz Mercado of the Philippines Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Service Administration (PAG-ASA) based in Misamis Oriental said that tolerable and manageable weather conditions have become a thing of the past.
“Forget about yesterday as we’re now dealing with La Niña, an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño. It is more dangerous and worrisome that we should always be alert,” Mercado said.
The La Niña-induced Typhoon Neneng brought a series of heavy downpours in Bukidnon, particularly in Manolo Fortich town, that overflowed nearby tributaries, thus affecting Cagayan de Oro as the usual catch basin.
“Yes, there was enough volume of waters from incessant rainfall, and barangays Puerto and Bugo were the city’s hardest hit,” said Mercado, citing the swelling of Alae River in Bugo, Agusan River in Brgy. Agusan, Umalag River in Tablon, Cugman River and Gusa River, and the nearby Tagoloan river also adversely affected the community in barangay Casinglot.
She proposed that it is still a great advantage to have a lush forest with many trees to hold and absorb waters to cushion the impact of La Niña’s ill-effect, though she averred that such influence to enforce a change primarily belongs to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).
Incidentally, the rain-battered Manolo Fortich is where the pineapple plantation finds its rich abundance at the fully-saturated Camp Phillips farmland.
Lido Virador, a former surveyor of a multi-national company in Bukidnon, revealed that a vast portion of the landlocked province had already been converted into pineapple farms, dropping an unimaginable number of trees in the process.
“What we did then was convinced small farmers to rent their lands for us for pineapple farming and this practice goes unabated,” he said.
Citing environmental studies, Ellorin said that only around 5O percent of the city’s drainage systems are interconnected with the rest still to be undertaken by the Department of Public Works and Highway (DPWH) for expansion.
Worse, Ellorin said that the tropical storm Sendong–the late-season tropical cyclone that caused around 1,200 to 1,500 deaths and catastrophic damage in Cagayan de Oro and nearby places in December 2011–was considered a 100-cycle flood.
Meaning, he said, a phenomenon like this supposedly happened only once in a hundred years just like the one experienced by the country in 1916.
“But because of climate change, at least four Sendong-like or 100-year cycle floods hit the city in the last 10 years. The Sendong flood in 2011, the Pablo flood in 2012, the Vinta flood in 2017, and Odette flood in 2021,” Ellorin recalled.
To this, Ellorin suggests that engineering solutions can only do so much to alleviate flooding in downtown/urban Cagayan de Oro from barangay Iponan to Bugo.
“Climate change characterized by more frequent above normal rainfall in the uplands should be considered in the comprehensive land use plan,” Ellorin said, adding that the
the drainage system in growth areas such as the uptown (Upper Carmen, Lumbia areas) Indahag and Upper Macasandig have to be completed as roads in those areas eventually become water passages every time there is heavy rain.
“The city’s development needs to move to higher ground,” he added.