2 Makilala residents drown in rampaging floods

NORTH COTABATO - Two residents were drowned Tuesday in floodwaters that flowed downstream through a large river in Makilala town following heavy rains in hinterlands around nearby Mount Apo.

Only one of the two fatalities, Edzel Lanzon Gudmalin, has been identified so far. 

North Cotabato’s upland Makilala town is located at the foot of Mount Apo, the country’s highest peak surrounded by tropical rainforests from where large rivers crisscrossing the municipality spring from.

The cadavers of the two victims were found one after another by emergency responders along rivers, underneath debris washed away by floodwaters. 

North Cotabato Gov. Nancy Catamco has tasked engineers in the provincial government to assess the structural durability of concrete bridges connecting banks of large rivers in Makilala that overflowed due to heavy rains. 

One of the affected bridges, the one connecting two ends of a stretch in Barangay Bulatukan of the Cotabato-Davao Highway that straddles through Makilala was closed to traffic for almost three hours Monday as floodwaters from hills around Mount Apo flowed through. 

Catamco also ordered the North Cotabato provincial disaster risk reduction and management council to extend assistance to the families of her two constituents who got drowned in flashfloods.

The council, which Catamco manages as chairperson, is also validating reports that some structures along the banks of the rivers in Makilala that overflowed have been damaged