By Nash B. Maulana

COTABATO CITY—Typhoon Frank has exposed the perils of an unfinished bridge in Mindanao.

Tons of marsh grassland pushed midstream during the onslaught of typhoon Frank accumulated and clogged Pulangi River, causing floods in the city and in villages downstream.

On Thursday, residents, led by Mayor Muslimin Sema, tried to manually split the huge soil mass of rooted grass and water lilies pushed grounded beneath the columns of a delta bridge here. But they failed.

The access road of the alternative bridge had been left unfinished by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) in Region XII since last year.

The mayor said the city engineering office mobilized heavy equipment to help residents cut and pull adrift the clogging grassland estimated by officials at some four hectares wide and about the river’s depth thick.

But as of weekend, the virtual stream island still clung and held the river’s downstream flow, forcing a waterway diversion toward the city and Sultan Kudarat town in Shariff Kabunsuan, which both lie below sea-level.

City councilor Anwar Malang Malang said the clogging diverted the river’s downstream course to smaller tributaries, overflowing onto at least eight of the city’s villages.

Malang said the stream’s new direction also resulted to stronger river current in another tributary which posed peril of drowning and possibly collapsing another bridge in the city, the Matampay Bridge.


Pointing fingers

City Vice-Mayor Japal Guiani Jr. said the city council had declared a state of calamity since typhoon Frank hit the country, but the city hardly received aid from the national government. City officials have asked the national government to send barge dredgers to dismantle the marsh grassland.

Mayor Muslimin Sema said the city government has given up on asking the Central Mindanao office of DPWH to help prevent the flooding in the city, and that a request should be made direct to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Two barge dredgers sailed here from Cavite for stationary waterway digging in 2001 on order of then Public Works Secretary Simeon Datumanong.

But Malang said the dredgers, which could have helped clear the river of the vegetated earth clog, were sent back to Manila soon after DPWH-Region 12 Director Usop Ali had his regular appointment from the President.

Efforts to reach Ali proved futile as his subordinate said the director was not available for interview.


No classes, no aid

Sema said “with outside help neither offered nor forthcoming,” the city hardly coped with day-to-day provision of basic needs for the displaced residents.

Residents said relief goods distributed were hardly enough in the affected villages.

Classes have been suspended the past days in at least two elementary schools here where most of the displaced families are temporarily sheltered, education officials
said.

In the city’s Nayon Shariff village, residents and students were seen wading knee-deep floodwater on a main thoroughfare bounding the Notre Dame University, and deeply submerged even were interior streets and residential areas.

Streets were dotted with makeshift tents of residents fleeing inundated low-lying areas here.