South Cotabato struggles to aid quake victims

COTABATO CITY — Local executives in South Cotabato province are struggling to provide extensive medical care to 334 constituents who sustained injuries, many of them still unsafe, following the 7.8-magnitude tremor that jolted Central Mindanao on Monday.

South Cotabato is one of the four provinces in Soccsksargen, whose center is less than an hour away from General Santos City via overland travel.

Up to 513 buildings and other infrastructures in General Santos City, in the provinces of Sarangani and South Cotabato and in its provincial capital, Koronadal City were damaged by Monday’s earthquake, according to official reports by local government units in the four areas.

The earthquake also affected the adjoining southern Zamboanga Peninsula, Northern Mindanao and the entire Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Officials of the Office of Civil Defense 12, the Bureau of Fire Protection 12 (BFP 12) and the Police Regional Office 12 (PRO 12) separately told reporters on Thursday that in Central Mindanao’s adjoining Soccsksargen area alone, 35 residents died as a result of Monday’s earthquake, based on reports, as of late Wednesday, by emergency responders in the field.

Officials also clarified that 20 of the fatalities in the region are residents of Glan and Malapatan towns in Sarangani. The epicenter of Monday’s earthquake that hit the Soccsksargen area is in the seaside Maasim town in Sarangani.

Officials also confirmed on Thursday that 647 individuals in Soccsksargen were hurt during and after the two-minute earthquake, hit by debris from damaged buildings and other structures that collapsed then.

Rolly D. Aquino, chief of South Cotabato’s Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management office, told reporters on Thursday that, based on reports by the local government units in the 10 towns and in Koronadal City that are under their jurisdiction, Monday’s earthquake left 334 residents in the province injured.

South Cotabato Governor Reynaldo S. Tamayo, Jr., and his constituent-mayors, together attended to the needs of the 334 injured villagers from across the province.

“The office of our governor had also extended initial assistance to the families of the three residents of the province who died as a result of last Monday’s powerful earthquake,” Mr. Aquino, a registered nurse, said.

Mr. Aquino said their field emergency response teams, backed by policemen and soldiers, are still searching for an ethnic T’boli villager underneath the tons of soil and rocks, loosened by the earthquake and cascaded from a hillside towards a flatland in T’boli town.

Mr. Tamayo, who is chairperson of the Regional Peace and Order Council 12, told reporters that, as of Thursday, engineers under his office and in the local government units in the province placed at P365 million their estimate of the cost of the buildings and other structures in their province that the earthquake destroyed.

“We are reporting this only now because we first focused on rescue and relief operations and on the evacuation to safe areas of our calamity-stricken constituents,” Mr. Tamayo said on Thursday.

Mr. Tamayo said he is grateful to Brig. Gen. Jose Vladimir R. Cagara, commander of the Army’s 6^th Infantry Division, and the director of PRO 12, Police Brig. Gen. Alan B. Manibog, and to officials of the BFP 12 for supporting extensively their disaster impact mitigation activities in South Cotabato, launched immediately after Monday’s earthquake that hit Region 12 and other areas in Mindanao. — John Felix M. Unson