FLOOD FATALITY. A rescue volunteer helps recover the remains of a resident in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao, on Friday (Oct. 28, 2022). The victim, one of the 31 fatalities recorded so far, was fished out of the rubble in Barangay Tanuel, Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao. (Photo courtesy of Nas Bangsamoro of Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao).
COTABATO CITY – The death toll in the flash floods and landslides spawned by Tropical Storm Paeng that hit Maguindanao rose to 31, officials said Friday afternoon.
Lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) interior minister, said 16 of the fatalities are from Datu Odin Sinsuat (DOS) town, 10 in Datu Blah Sinsuat, five in Upi, all in Maguindanao.
“Most of the fatalities were in a sub-village near Mt. Minandar in Barangay Kusiong of DOS town,” Sinarimbo told reporters.
Datu Blah Sinsuat Mayor Marshal Sinsuat said a village councilman of Barangay Nalkan was among the fatalities in his town.
He identified the severely affected villages as Pura, Nalkan and Tubuan.
Sinarimbo, also head of BARMM’s disaster unit – Rapid Emergency Action on Disaster Incidence (READI), said rescue workers are still in the field searching for the five missing persons in the coastal village of Kusiong in DOS town.
Maj. Gen. Roy Galido, the Army’s 6th Infantry Division commander, has sent soldiers and members of the division’s Water and Sea Rescue teams to help save individuals trapped by floods and landslides in Barangay Kusiong.
About 8,000 residents of Upi, an upland town in Maguindanao, were also forced to relocate to higher grounds as floods inundated villages in its town proper.
They were brought to the town’s covered court that was also later inundated by floodwaters from upland villages.
In Cotabato City, the City Council passed a resolution Friday afternoon declaring a state of calamity after 25 of the 37 villages in the city were inundated.
About 67,000 persons have been affected by floods in this city. (PNA)
