Ormoc remembers 1991 killer flood

ORMOC CITY, Philippines — City officials on Sunday led the annual commemoration of the flash flood that killed an estimated 8,000 people on November 5, 1991.

The commemoration rite started with a motorcade from the City Hall to the Flash Flood Memorial, where three mass graves were laid 26 years ago to bury most of the victims.

On the exact number of buried bodies in the mass graves were never counted because they had to be dumped by the truckloads then, as the city raced against time to bury the victims that were fast decomposing almost everywhere.

There was a short program at the memorial site, followed by the offering of flowers and candle-lighting by City Hall department heads, and flood survivors.

Vice Mayor Leo Carmelo Locsin Jr., in his message, said the city will continue to commemorate the day so that its lessons will not be lost. “We continue to learn, to know that the world we live in is strong but also vulnerable,” he told the crowd.

“Hence, we must not forget that the future of this one world greatly depends on what we do, how we act … that Mother Earth is borrowed from our children, our grandchildren. Our great responsibility is to protect, to conserve and to preserve it,” he added.

He also invited all those who were present at the ceremony to join the LGU after the memorial rite for a tree-planting activity along the riverbanks of Panilahan River at Barangay Ipil in the city.

Locsin said the City Council is mulling an ordinance to make November 5 a “Barangay Cleanup Day,” to raise environmental awareness at the village level. “Tree-planting should also be a must for the barangays with open areas,” he said.

It was the vice mayor who led this year’s rites because Mayor Richard Gomez was on his way to Washington, DC, USA for a seminar on federalism for local executives, initiated by the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG). (FREEMAN)