Nature’s wrath

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) deployed its foresters, augmented by personnel from Negros Occidental, to trek to the mountains of Iloilo and inspect the areas where the flash floods that inundated a wide area of Iloilo City, Pavia, Sta. Barbara, Cabatuan, and Janiuay had originated.

“We wanted to check on the ground what had really happened last June 21 and find out whether reported illegal logging had triggered the flash floods,” forester Valentin Talevero, provincial head of the DENR, said over the radio program, “The Capitol in Action”, broadcast last Saturday, July 19, over Aksyon Radyo (www.aksyonradyoiloilo.net).

The massive investigation was conducted because hundreds, if not thousands, of fallen tree trunks had been swept down the path of the floods, raising questions about whether these trees had been cut in illegal logging activities as alleged by certain individuals and groups.

Talavero said that the inventory of tree trunks showed that 99% were uprooted and swept away as a result of massive landslides that took place deep in the mountains of Maasin, Alimodian and Janiuay in the early morning of Saturday, June 21.

As reported by PAG-ASA, a total of 354 millimeters of rain had poured over Iloilo province in a 24-hour period starting Friday, June 20, and this weakened the ground soil in the watershed area, With strong winds pulling at the trees, the ground just collapsed from the sides of the mountains, bringing tons of soil, rocks and trees to form natural dams on the rivers below.

As more rains fell, the level of the river rose, building more pressure on the natural dams. When the dams could no longer hold the huge volume of flood waters, these obstructions broke, unleashing torrents of water and fallen trees surging toward the lowlands.

This is the reason there were media reports about a big dam bursting in Iloilo, when in truth, there is no dam of significant size in the province.

Talavero said that he directed his foresters to inspect a report that “clean-cut” logs had been found in a few places in Sta. Barbara. This was the basis for the media reports about illegal logging being the culprit.

“Indeed, our people found a number of trees that had been cut with the use of chain saws, but this happened after the flood, when barangay officials had to clear roads of obstructions,” Talavero said.

The barangay officials apparently had to cut up the trees to make it easier for them to remove the same from the roads, a fact that was validated by Sta. Barbara mayor Isabelo “Beloy” Maquino.

Talavero said markings were also etched in the logs, but these were made by the barangay officials as identification marks for later use in claiming ownership.

It was Maquino who had first aired suspicions that illegally cut trees were found in some barangays of his town in the aftermath of the floods.

Pavia mayor Arcadio Gorriceta also testified that 95% of the trees found in his municipality, perhaps the most hard-hit by the floods, were uprooted, and not sawn clean by loggers.

These statements support the theory that I had espoused on Tuesday, June 25, that the heavy downpour, aggravated by landslides, had caused the floods. I had personally undertaken an aerial survey aboard an Air Force helicopter that day, and I saw basically the same things described by Talavero.

In fact, we have a photograph of the gaping wound in the mountains of “Puting Bato” in barangay Dagami, Maasin, that Talavero revealed was a huge landslide that affected 122 hectares of virgin forest.

This destruction caused by nature’s wrath was a source of sorrow and pain for foresters like Talavero.

That area happens to be one of the few places in the mountains where original-growth trees were still standing.

“One tree trunk that we found had a diameter of 1.5 meters and length of 14 meters, and it pains us to see that this was a rare variety that is lost forever,” Talavero said.