It is quite unfortunate and sad that we commemorated this year’s Christmas with several deaths, massive destructions, and unwanted sufferings brought by the recent typhoon Odette.
The devastating typhoon made a number of landfalls in parts of Mindanao, Visayas to Palawan on December 16 and 17. Negros Occidental was badly hit with 45 persons dead and 117 injured, while 10 others are still missing, as reported by the Provincial Disaster Management Program Division. Sipalay City accounted for the most deaths at 17 persons followed by Kabankalan City with 13 casualties.
The typhoon brought heavy rains and strong winds, destroying an estimated 56,674 houses and another 200,157 houses were damaged in the entire province. Ilog and Kabankalan have the highest number of destroyed houses at 10,637 and 4,369, respectively.
The data released by the provincial government showed the southern part of Negros Occidental was heavily affected, although all other cities and municipalities, including Bacolod City, in the province were similarly devastated.
Relief, recovery, and cleaning up operations are still ongoing, while power, communication, and water services are still not available in some areas of the province. Numerous infrastructures were also partially or totally damaged, including school buildings, markets, and power and communication transmission lines.
Those who have been rendered homeless by the typhoon are still in various evacuation centers. Some households were not able to salvage and secure belongings from their houses, especially those that have been totally wiped out and inundated by rushing and high floodwaters.
Flooding in Negros Occidental is no longer new. Heavy flooding occurred in the past, especially in southern Negros Occidental. Typhoons Nitang (1984) and Ruping (1990) submerged Kabankalan and nearby localities due to intense flooding. Similar incidents also occurred in northern Negros Occidental in recent years, and even Bacolod City has its own story to tell when it comes to flood.
In most cases, when heavy rains occur even without tropical storm, landslide and flooding are the immediate impacts and consequences.
The impact of typhoon Nitang had made realized concerned Negrenses to lobby for the imposition of total commercial logging ban in the province. Heavy floods flashed huge logs and trees from the mountains to down streams and lowland sites in southern Negros Occidental, Kabankalan, in particular, during typhoon Nitang.
The movement to save the remaining forest in the province evolved, but it was only after EDSA Revolution in 1986 when commercial logging ban was imposed in Negros Occidental when the late FulgencioFactoran Jr. became the secretary of the Department of Environment Natural Resources during the incumbency of former President Corazon Aquino.
Negros Occidental has long been deforested and somehow it is one of the factors to consider why flooding is occurring. While flooding could not be avoided totally when heavy and prolong rainfall happens, but good forest cover helps mitigate the impact of this calamity.
The province’s classified forestland is about 197,016 hectares or roughly 25 percent of its total land area, based on the latest forestry statistics of the Forest Management Bureau of the DENR.
The forest cover of Negros Occidental is about 52,673 hectares, or 27 percent of the classified forestland. With this figure, the total forest cover of Negros Occidental is placed at seven percent out of its total land area.
Based on this statistics, a large track of forestlands are either deforested or converted into other purposes. It is also important to note that only about 18,681 hectares of Negros Occidental’s remaining forest cover are classified as closed forest of which the canopy of trees is still covering the grounds.
An estimated 28,496 hectares of the forest in the province are already open forest, which may cover logged over areas, secondary growth forest, and forest patches. I am in doubt if the closed forest cover is entirely natural forest, as it may include tree plantations, especially reforestation using exotic species.*