Tsunami threat forces villagers to high grounds

COTABATO CITY — Hundreds of families in the adjoining Lebak and Kalamansig towns in Sultan Kudarat relocated and slept in highland areas the past two nights for fear of tsunami after tremors jolted both areas and other parts of Central Mindanao on Tuesday and early Wednesday.

Radio reports on Thursday stated that Kalamansig Mayor Ronan Eugene C. Garcia signed last Wednesday a directive for barangay officials and personnel of their Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office to cooperate in evacuating residents of 11 coastal areas in the municipality to highlands in anticipation of a possible tsunami after the tremors.

The 11 seaside enclaves, Santa Clara, Pag-Asa, Datu Ito Andong, Nalilidan, Dumangas Nuevo, Santa Maria, Cadiz, Sangay, Paril, Baliwasan and Poblacion, are home to mixed Muslim, Christian and ethnic non-Moro Teduray communities.

Classes in all schools in Lebak and Kalamansig have also been suspended since Tuesday as an emergency contingency measure of the local government units in both towns after the series of earthquakes shook both areas, causing panic among residents.

Both Lebak and Kalamansig and nearby barangays in what is now Datu Blah Sinsuat town in Maguindanao del Norte and other beachfront areas fronting the Moro Gulf were badly devastated by a tsunami, more than 10 feet high, following an intensity 8 earthquake of undersea origin, on Aug. 16, 1976.

Many buildings in Cotabato City, now capital of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, were destroyed then.

The disaster left more than 8,000 villagers in coastal areas in the provinces of Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Lanao del Norte and in Zamboanga Del Sur and in its capital, Pagadian City, dead. — John Felix M. Unson