UNDERWATER. A school and houses in the municipality of Panay are still underwater based on the aerial inspection conducted by the Western Visayas Regional Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (RDRRMC 6) Wednesday (April 13, 2022). As of 3 p.m., there are 138 barangays from four provinces in Panay Island still flooded. (Photo courtesy of OCD 6)
ILOILO CITY – Tropical Depression Agaton has left six persons dead and over PHP85.5 million worth of damage to agriculture in the worst-hit Western Visayas provinces of Iloilo and Capiz.
Their respective municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM) teams confirmed three deaths from the municipality of Sara, and one each in Ajuy and Lemery, all from Iloilo province and one from the town of Pilar in Capiz, according to the report of the Western Visayas Regional DRRMC (RDRRMC 6) on Wednesday.
“We are still waiting for the approved situation report from the national DRRMC for us to release their names,” said Office of the Civil Defense (OCD) information officer Cindy Ferrer in an interview.
Apart from the deaths, the reported number of affected families increased to 62,120 or equivalent to 247,867 individuals; 10,337 families equivalent to 35,094 are still staying in evacuation centers while 7,423 families or 30,451 persons are temporarily staying with their relatives.
“The affected families are from Aklan, Antique, Capiz, Iloilo, and Negros Occidental,” said the RDRRMC situation report as of 3 p.m. citing the disaster response operations monitoring and information center (DROMIC) report of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
The DSWD has provided PHP5.9 million worth of family food packs and 100 tents worth PHP439,000 to affected families in Iloilo, Capiz, and Negros Occidental.
The destroyed rice crops were initially pegged at PHP83.58 million covering 5,787.31 hectares; 502.18 hectares in Iloilo and 5, 285.13 hectares in Capiz.
The municipality of Sara in northern Iloilo has also been placed under a state of calamity effective April 12, 2022.
The RDRRMC on Wednesday also made an aerial assessment of the affected areas, particularly in northern Iloilo and Capiz together with Capiz Governor Esteban Evan Contreras and its Provincial DRRM Officer Judy Grace Pelaez to determine the extent of damage caused by the typhoon.
“It is still flooded mostly in severely affected areas of Capiz such as Mambusao, Dumarao, Pontevedra, Sigma, Panit-an, Panay, Dao, and Roxas City. The northern part of Iloilo has already subsided,” Ferrer said.
As of 3 p.m., there are still 138 flooded barangays that are flooded in Panay Island: eight in Aklan, 126 in Capiz, one in Iloilo, and three in Antique. (PNA)
