All Towns Inundated, Disaster Official Says; More Floating Assets Needed

CAGAYAN, ISABELA UNDER WATER — A flooded area of Isabela is seen during an aerial inspection on Saturday, November 14, 2020. (contributed). Inset: A family settles down to sleep on the roof of their house in Iraga, Solana, Cagayan. Rescuers were working around the clock but could not accommodate all flood victims in evacuation centers. (Courtesy of CPIO Francis Jorque)

- Joseph Pedrajas, Noreen Jazul, And Martin A. Sadongdong

#CagayanNeedsHelp started to trend on Twitter Friday night as residents of Cagayan started to scream for help after the entire province was slowly being submerged in flood.

Sporadic screams of, “tulong! tulong! (help! help)” and “rescue, rescue!” were heard as residents already on their rooftops begged for help amid the rising flood.

The situation worsened early Saturday morning when parts of Cagayan went pitch-black due to power outage.

The massive flooding came after Magat Dam, one of the largest dams in the Philippines, opened all seven of its gates last Thursday to release water before reaching its spilling level, which was triggered by Typhoon “Ulysses” and the previous typhoons. As of Saturday, only two gates are open.

The situation in Cagayan started with Typhoon “Nika,” then Typhoon “Pepito,” and Super-typhoon “Rolly,” said Ronald Villa, operations chief of the Office of Civil Defense in Cagayan Valley (OCD-2). Then came Ulysses, and it worsened with the release of water from Magat Dam.

Protocols followed

“Talagang catch basin po kami, buong region. Since valley po itong Cagayan, lahat po ng tubig galing sa Cordillera, Caraballo, ganoon din po sa Sierra Madre mountain ranges bumababa po dito sa amin (Our whole region is really a catch basin. And since Cagayan province is a valley, all the waters coming from the mountains of Cordillera, Caraballo, and Sierra Madre would go down to us),” Cagayan Gov. Manuel Mamba acknowledged in an interview over TeleRadyo, explaining the flooding.