TARLAC CITY, Tarlac—More than 2,000 metric tons of rice crops worth nearly P6 million were submerged in floodwater and destroyed beyond recovery in Tarlac province due to heavy rains spawned by typhoon Julia.
In a partial report on crop damage, the Tarlac provincial agriculture office (PAO) said 2,093 farmers were affected by the monsoon rains when the farms they had been tilling went underwater.
The PAO report said 3,178 hectares of palay plants in their "maximum tillering" and "seedling" stages were totally destroyed.
It also estimated that 0.15 percent of the total rice yield in the province had been lost due to the monsoon rains.
Records show that as of the present planting season there are 69,386 hectares of lands planted with rice in the province.
At the height of the typhoon, too, the La Paz-Zaragoza Road in La Paz town had remained inaccessible to all types of vehicles due to knee-high floodwater, according to the provincial disaster coordinating council (PDCC).
Marvin Guiang, team leader of the PDCC’s disaster action rescue team (DART), said a 2-meter-by-5-meter portion of the Barangay Armenia stretch of the Tarlac dike eroded during the typhoon.
He said sandbagging operations and constant vigilance by disaster officials and barangay residents had prevented further damage to the eroded portion of the dike.
