The ruins of a centuries-old village recently reappeared due to the drying up of a lake near the Pantabangan Dam in Nueva Ecija province.
Like the whole of Southeast Asia, the Philippines has been in the grip of an intense heatwave for almost a week. While nearly 47,000 schools in the archipelago have closed their doors due to weather conditions, these extreme heat waves had a more than unexpected effect in the province of Nueva Ecija.
After a long period marked by very little rainfall, the water level of an artificial lake has fallen since March, downstream of the Pantabangan dam, to the point of revealing parts of a submerged church, tombstones and the ruins of a three-century-old village.
The latter, located about 200 kilometers north of Manila, had been submerged since the construction of the building in the 1970s, to promote irrigation of the area, the production of hydroelectric energy and to control possible flooding. The local population was then displaced. The water level there has fallen by almost 50 meters compared to its normal level of 221 meters, according to official data.
This is the longest period during which the village – having already resurfaced five times in the past – has remained above water since the dam was put into operation, Marlon Paladin, engineer of the dam, told AFP. The national agency responsible for operating the country’s dams.
Enough to give several inhabitants of the region the opportunity to make these foundations a real attraction for tourists. “At the time, fishing only earned me 200 pesos (3.25 euros), but with the arrival of tourists, I earn between 1,500 and 1,800 pesos per day,” Nelson, a local fisherman, explained to Guardian.
The situation also allowed former inhabitants of these ruins to visit the site. Now 68, Melanie was a teenager when her family was forced to leave their home.
“I was emotional because I remembered my old life there,” she told AFP after returning there for the first time. “My heart was overwhelmed because I studied there, I was even born there.”
She could have the opportunity to observe her village for a while longer since the situation is expected to continue in the Philippines. Meteorologists predict it will get even hotter in the coming days. Despite a real temperature measured around 37°C this week, the humidity regularly pushes the feeling to more than 42°C.
An impact on local economic activity
“We see that the level of our dams will go down, including in Pantabangan and other areas,” Benison Estareja of the state meteorological office Pagasa told BBC News.
The heatwave is largely reinforced locally by the El Niño phenomenon, but also by the unusual warming of surface waters in the Pacific Ocean.
The drop in water levels also forced the two hydroelectric plants linked to the dam to suspend their activity at the beginning of April, before the normal closure initially planned for Wednesday, May 1, as reported by the Philippine media Philstar Global.
It also deprived many rice farmers of the irrigation water they needed to work. As a result, some of them have fallen back on growing vegetables, which use less water.
