Iriga City - Mt. Iriga, known to the Irigueños as Mt. Asog, a popular destination for mountain climbers, home to some 3,500 Aeta aborigines in the Rinconada district of Camarines Sur, now poses a threat to the lives and dwellings of some 80,000 local residents living in at least nine barangays of the 36 villages in this city.
Reports state that the dominantly denuded mountain is now full of erosions with landslides cascading down its gulleys
Iriga City Mayor Madelaine Alfelor Gazmen expressed fear that the flooding last October 27 and 28, which caught the city by surprise, is a wake-up call that flash floods and landslides descending from Mt. Asog are imminent threats.
During the heavy rains, Iriga City was submerged in more than 1-meter of flood waters, while silted soil and rocks covered the city streets at about 12”- inches thick.
Engineer Felix C. Azur, project development officer III if Iriga’s City Planning and Development Office revealed that Mayor Gazmen has organized a labor force that is reinforcing with sandbags the perimeters of a one hectare, old quarry site at barangay San Nicolas, which has served as a catch-basin for flood waters flowing from Mt. Asog.
According to the team of the City engineering office tasked to recommend mitigation measures for Mt. Asog, they have proposed the building of some P45-million worth of protective structures; a Gabion–type mini-dam and a compounding dam to trap cascading sediments and redirect the flow of flood waters into an existing irrigation canal.
Azur explained that without the intend protective structures, future typhoons with strong flashfloods will breach the upland barangay of San Nicolas and inundate low lying villages in the city, like; San Roque, San Juan, San Jose, San Miguel, San Francisco, Francia, and Sta. Cruz Sur.
DENR’s Bureau of Mines and Geosciences had included Mt. Asog as among the high-risk areas for landslides in Bikol, but since MGB geologists have climbed Mt. Asog after the October 27 floods and landslides, the agency has yet to give Mayor Gazmen a report on the findings of massive soil erosions in the gulleys and uplands of Mt. Asog.
Aeta chieftains told Iriga officials that as many as 15 sites of landslides were found during the flashfloods last October, while forestry experts in the DENR claimed Mt. Asog in now practically denuded of trees, after the mountains have been largely cleared for agricultural purposes by both the aborigines and settlers in the last 30 years.