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LOTS OF HELP NEEDED Vice President Leni Robredo delivers relief items to victims of the typhoon in Isabela province. —PHOTO COURTESY OF THE VICE PRESIDENT’S OFFICE
Vice President Leni Robredo toured Cagayán and Isabela on Sunday morning to assess the extent of the damage caused by Typhoon Ulysses (international name: Vamco) in both provinces due to what local government officials considered the worst flooding ever. they had experimented in more than four decades.
In Cagayan, Robredo said that the flood “was no longer as bad as we had seen in the previous photos, since the water had receded a bit.
When asked to comment on President Rodrigo Duterte’s arrival in Cagayan shortly after she did, Robredo said it was not “a race.”
“What is more important is that we are somewhat dispersed, not only the president but other government officials. I believe that in incidents like this, [our presence] really helps boost [residents’] morality and give them hope ”, he emphasized.
The vice president was the first national government official to land in the flood-ravaged Cagayan Valley region, some 48 hours after the first reports of calls for help from residents stranded on the roofs of their homes reached Metro Manila. .
Their first stop was at the evacuation centers in the city of Tuguegarao, where the destruction was reportedly the worst. Some residents told Robredo that the flood water in some areas had reached 5 meters.
People who were able to evacuate earlier, he noted, came from communities that were used to flooding. But those who stayed behind “were really surprised by the strength of Ulysses and the speed with which the water rose, so they could not evacuate.”
While the waters had receded, the towns of Alcalá and Allacapan remained impassable. “We left a team to carry out relief operations but they couldn’t get through, so they would look for another way to get in as there were reports that the devastation there is extreme,” Robredo said.
Another team also stayed behind in the city of Ilagan, Isabela, to assist in relief operations with some municipalities still unreachable due to flooding, he added.
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