Deja Vu

It was raining here for a week because of a low pressure area somewhere in Luzon. No typhoon, but the non-stop rains caused some minor floodings and we have no electricity since yesterday. I'm here at ASCOT and were running on generator power. On the way here I saw that Kinalapan and Dikaloyungan rivers are flooded, and there were some rockfalls and overflows on the roads. Someone told me that last night, the local disaster council was preparing to evacuate the residents of Obligacion, just in case situations turn to worse. They have trucks and firetrucks there waiting last night. I don't know if they evacuated, but luckily the rain stopped around midnight last night. The sky is still cloudy and i hope the sun would come out because we need to have our clothes dried :-). The Baler-Bongabong road is unpassable and there are lots of stranded vehicles there, according to the news. I don't know if the Canili Road is passable. I'll post some pictures later.

Here are some news from the net:

From Tempo Online: "First, the 50-kilometer-long Baler-Bongabon Road (BBR), a vital road network linking Aurora to the rest of Central Luzon, has been rendered impassable to all kinds of vehicles since Monday due to the week-long downpour that hit the eastern province. Now, the entire Aurora province is without electricity. As of yesterday, Barangay Villa in Maria Aurora, in Aurora province, has been closed to traffic, after the bridge spanning the Villa River had been washed out by floodwaters. Newshen Grace Sansano, reporting in Baler from the stricken side of Aurora via cellphone, said that several electric posts of the Aurora electric cooperative (Aurelco) were felled by several landslides caused by the cascading floodwaters. The office of civil defense here was unable to provide immediate details as to the extent of the damage although search-and-rescue missions were mapped out yesterday. (Magtanggol C. Vilar)"

from Manila Bulletin: Hundreds stranded on vital road in Aurora & Nueva Ecija: 50-kilometer stretch impassable due to floods spawned by heavy rains.

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Meanwhile:

from inq7.net: DENR allows resumption of Aurora logging. "The Department of Environment and Natural Resources has lifted the suspension order on a timber company in Aurora, signaling the resumption of logging operations there after an eight-month nationwide ban following last year’s deadly landslides. Ricardo Calderon, forestry chief of the DENR in Central Luzon, confirmed on Thursday the permission given to the Industries Development Corp. (IDC) to resume operations. The firm, based in Casiguran, Aurora, holds two DENR-issued integrated forest management agreements (Ifma) over 48,877 hectares, which expires in December 2025, and over 9,466 hectares, which ends in October 2007."

these paragraphs from the same news are disturbing: "The clamor to reopen the IDC came from the municipal councils of Dilasag and Casiguran, which passed separate resolutions asking President Macapagal-Arroyo to allow “selective logging” in their areas. The provincial board, on the other hand, passed in April Resolution No. 39 to air its desire to “create job employment opportunities in the wood-based industry through the implementation of sustainable forest management strategies.”

Couple that with the fact that the provincial government is not against LEGAL logging and only after the illegal ones, one wonders on which side our government officials are on.