Cagayan Valley Hit By Worst Flood in Decades

by Harseerat Mann, Opinions Editor

Courtsey of CNN

Typhoon Vamco made landfall in Vietnam on November 16. After leaving sixty-seven dead within the Philippines, making it the country's deadliest hurricane of the year.

The Cagayan Valley hosts a population of 1.2 million and is agriculturally focused. Nearly 14,000 people have migrated to evacuation centers due to flooding.

Several factors caused the floods, such as rain from the latest tropical cyclones and which prompted the discharge of water from the Magat Dam. The extra water flows to the Cagayan River and its tributaries, leading to flooding in communities.

In the Philippines, catastrophe organizations scrambled on Saturday to rescue in a northern province after the twenty-first cyclone to hit the Philippines this year tore through the main island of Luzon on Wednesday and early Thursday.

“There has been no respite for more than eight million people living in central Vietnam," President of the Vietnam Red Cross Society, Nguyen Thi Xuan Thu said.

More than 25,000 homes were damaged causing $9.7 million worth of infrastructure was destroyed.

Cagayan, a province located in the Cagayan Valley region and the northeastern tip of Luzon, is one of the areas hit the hardest. It is one of the worst floodings in the region in decades.

"Each time they start rebuilding their lives and livelihoods, they are pummeled by yet another storm,” Reporter Reuters and Akanksha Sharma said in the article for CNN.

Another $24.7 million worth of agriculture has been damaged due to flooding and landslides. Heavy rainfall and sturdy winds added with Typhoon Vamco lead to the destruction of infrastructure.

“We’re already on the third day atop our roof. We need relief goods and clothing because we saved nothing,” a resident in Tuguegarao City, Ramilo Lagundi, told the radio station DZBB. Lagundi said he was staying with hundreds of other neighbors on rooftops,” the Aljazeera, Reuters article said.

Electricity strains are down and stranded people have run low on electronics battery, making communication increasingly difficult. Quarantine regulations within the Philipinnes have additionally restricted inter-location travel for media and useful resource employees as COVID-19 remains rampant.

“As someone who’s lived in the Philippines before and experienced a mere storm that devastated huge buildings, I understand the great difficulties the Philippines is currently experiencing with its consecutive typhoons,” Kennedy junior Jesmin Magaway said. “The Philippines is in great need of all the support they can get especially with COVID-19 still present in the country.”

Forests, soil, and mountain ranges— all nature’s limitations and defenses in opposition to disasters, but unchecked human interest has decreased their effectiveness, setting hundreds of thousands at risk.