InterAksyon.com
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MALOLOS CITY, Bulacan - Backfloods cascading from the neighboring provinces of Nueva Ecija and Pampanga continued to swamp the low-lying coastal towns of Calumpit and Hagonoy.
Governor Wilhelmino M. Sy-Alvarado, who is personally supervising the relief and rescue operations at the command center of the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office (PDRRMO), on Saturday dispatched additional rescue teams to the two towns which have become the catch basin of floodwaters every time severe flooding hit Central Luzon.
The PDRRMO on Saturday reported that at least 28 villages in Calumpit are submerged under two to six feet of floodwaters.
The hardest hit villages in Calumpit are Barangay Gugo (currently under five to six feet of water); Barangay. San Jose (under four to six feet); Barangay . Sapang Bayan, Barangay Bulusan, Barangay. San Miguel (all under two to six feet); Barangay Frances (three to four feet) and Iba O’este (two to four feet).
Other villages in Calumpit are also under two to three feet of rising floodwaters, the PDRRMO report said.
Alvarado said some 1,079 families or 4,917 persons have been evacuated.
In Hagonoy, 20 villages are under two to four feet of floodwater with some 596 families or 2, 489 individuals evacuated to safer grounds.
Aside from Calumpit and Hagonoy, 11 villages in Obando remained flooded.
The governor said he persuaded the operators of Angat, Ipo and Bustos dams not to open their spill gates and momentarily halt the release of waters in order not to aggravate the back-floods now surging to Calumpit and Hagonoy.
Friday night, Romuald T. Beltran of Dams, Reservoir and Flood Forecasting of the National Power Corporation (NAPOCOR), said that “due to the cascading of flood waters in Calumpit from Nueva Ecija and Pampanga, the spilling of accumulated water in the reservoir is hereby put on-hold until further notice,” according to Alvarado.
As floods began to subside in many parts of the province, the water elevation at Angat dam continued to rise.
As of 8:00 a.m. Saturday, the water elevation at Angat dam was recorded at 214. 32 meters, eclipsing its spilling level of 212 meters by 2.32 meters.
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