It indeed seemed puzzling how a City so renowned for being a grandslam winner of the Gawad KalaSaG (Kalamidad at Sakuna Labanan Sariling Galing ang Kaligtasan) Award could be brought to its knees by three days of successive torrential monsoon rains.
In all, six persons were killed by the raging floodwaters, to include a rescuer, Police Officer 1 Rodelyn Gonzaga, 29, who was swept away by strong currents as he was rescuing flood victims.
City Public Safety Officer Cindy Salimbagat, who is also the City Disaster Risk Reduction & Management Council Officer, identified the other fatalities as Tanorio Bacarion, 60; Ronald Garganian, 14; Poreciano Sedo, 74; Maricel Borgado, 34 and Shirley Tiongco Tombrador, 56.
Salimbagat said all missing persons have been accounted for and 36 families, or about 150 individuals, lost their homes and are now camped out at the evacuation center.
Official estimates placed the damage at P50.9 million for agriculture, P40 million for infrastructure, P8 million for commercial establishments, P1.8 million for textbooks or a total of P100.1 million.
Bayawan City Mayor German Sarana, Jr., said there were 3000 families numbering around 20,000 people, who evacuated their homes.
It had been raining on and off for most of that week, but the situation turned for the worse by Friday when the rains got stronger and would not stop.
Edilberito Euraoba III, operations officer of the Bayawan Public Safety Office and the City Disaster Risk Reduction & Management Council, said their office advised people in flood-prone areas Saturday afternoon to seek safety in higher grounds but the residents refused, saying they were already used to floods.
By Sunday dawn, calls for help started reaching the PSO as floodwaters reached unprecedented levels.
“Help, we’re only inches away from dying!” Euraoba recalled hearing the pleas of flood victims who had already evacuated to their rooftops.
Making the most of whatever resources they had, Euraoba dispatched the City’s two rescue boats to the hardest-hit barangays. But there were just too many calls for help.
“There’s this feeling of helplessness. The task was simply overwhelming –so many people called us for help and we just couldn’t attend to everyone,” Euraoba said.
To make matters worse, one of the rubber boats got punctured, and became inoperable. With only one functional rescue boat in operation, rescuers had their hands full prioritizing the victims who needed immediate evacuation.
Even Mayor Sarana was not spared from the floods, as he found himself trapped in his home by chest-deep waters. It took a boat from the Dumaguete City Rescue Unit to come to his rescue around 10 a.m. Sunday, which brought him to City Hall so he could assume command of the disaster relief and rehabilitation efforts.
Flooding on both ends of Bayawan City, which is bordered by the Bayawan River on the north and Sicopong River in the south, rendered it isolated from the rest of Negros Oriental. Buses and even 10-wheeler trucks could not pass the floodwaters.
“The currents were very strong and the floods were very deep, reaching over six feet high,” said Jose Chiu, the head of the Dumaguete City Rescue Unit.
Rescue volunteers who did not have boats set up a rescue staging area at the Negros Oriental State University Bayawan Campus in barangay Caranoche, some five kilometers away from the city proper.
With power cut off, communication facilities soon started to bog down. “Our rescuers in the field eventually had problems with their two-way radios after they got wet in the rain and this made our operations more difficult,” Euraoba said.
Bringing food from the city to the evacuees at the NORSU campus was also impossible. “We tried three times using our biggest truck but we could not get through the floods,” Salimbagat said.
Big waves brought about by the southwest monsoon also ruled out any rescue operation from the sea. “If the rains continued for one more day, there would have been a lot more deaths,” Euraoba said.
Rescuers from other local government units were also pulled out by Sunday afternoon because the rains had also threatened to engulf Dumaguete City and other areas with floods. The Banica, Ocoy and Siaton rivers, which brought floods to Dumaguete City and the towns of Sibulan and Siaton in previous heavy downpours, were also close to spilling their dikes.
“That’s one important lesson we learned in this tragedy. We need to rely on our own resources. Once calamity strikes, you’re on your own,” Salimbagat said.
She is thankful that the personnel of the PSO came to work, despite the fact that they were also needed in their own homes. “We had a responsibility to the people of Bayawan,” she said.
Noting how close Negros Oriental came close to a bigger disaster, Governor Roel Degamo appealed to President Benigno Aquino III to release the P480 million balance of the P960 million calamity fund which had been earmarked for the repair of infrastructure damaged by Tropical Storm Sendong.
In an interview, Degamo said that many Negrenses were spared from the floods in Dumaguete City, Sibulan and Siaton towns as a result of the construction of river dikes and river dredging and rechanneling projects undertaken by his administration with the initial release of P480 million last year.
The Province had identified projects totaling P960 million, which would repair the damage wrought by Sendong.
The Department of Budget & Management then transmitted the initial amount of P480 million but followed it up with a Negative Special Allotment Release Order, indicating that it was getting back the money. The DBM said the fund release did not follow certain required procedures.
The Commission on Audit also issued a Notice of Disallowance late last year, on the contracts entered into by the Province with Legazpi Construction Corp. in relation to this fund.
Instead of returning the money, the Province of Negros Oriental instead entered into contracts with contractors for projects totaling P960 million Degamo blamed the issuance of the Negative Saro on politics, as he was running against the President”ºs political ally in the May 2013 elections. “This is all politics, I can only see President Aquino pursuing the tuwid na daan but I can’t see it in the people below him,” Degamo said.
Degamo said he ordered the spending of the money because this was a calamity fund and was meant to protect lives.
Provincial Engr. Franco Alpuerto said that the P480 million was paid to the contractors who accomplished 64 percent of the projects included in the earlier list of projects.
River dikes measuring 1.5 kilometers had been set up along the Banica River in Dumaguete, the Ocoy River in Sibulan and in the Siaton River in Siaton town. “If not for these dikes, the monsoon rains would have caused more damage to life and property,” Degamo said.
