CALAPAN CITY -- Flood-weary residents promptly evacuated as the city hall sounded the siren at around 1 p.m. Tuesday, signaling that floodwaters are again approaching.

City dwellers took motorcycles, cars, passenger mini-vans, dump trucks and any other means of transportation to flee the floods moving fast toward the city.

As of 10:12 p.m., the floodwaters were only five kilometers away from the densely populated center of Oriental Mindoro province’s capital, city information officer Lowell Goco told INQ7.net.

Evacuees were clutching mats, bags cooking utensils and even pets to again take temporary shelter in evacuation centers or their relatives’ homes in safer areas.

Three evacuation centers were filled up by about 300 families hours after the siren was sounded.

The approaching waters are expected to submerge again most of this city’s 62 villages, just five days after the last floodwaters receded Thursday.

Provincial and city government employees were busy packing relief goods from seriously depleted stocks used during the December 7-9 and December 17-22 flooding.

"Some of our evacuees spent their Christmas at our evacuation centers. Now they are back,” city administrator Doy C. Leachon said.

“Where shall we get the funds to provide for their needs?" he said, admitting that the city's calamity funds had been depleted.

The city government has been "begging for food, water and medicine" to avoid the spread of disease in evacuation centers, Leachon said.

At the height of the two previous floods, 33 evacuation centers were set up in Calapan as 77,000 of the city's 120,000 residents were displaced. Forty-eight of its 62 villages were under murky waters.

In the entire province, the flooding had displaced 112,264 people in the towns of Naujan, Victoria, Baco, Socorro, Pola and this city. Three persons, including a two-year old girl, were drowned.

Damage to agriculture and properties had reached over 100 million pesos.

The floods also brought to the spotlight the aging Bucayao River Protection Dike, a 22-kilometer earthen dike built in 1975 to shield Calapan City from overflow of Bucayao River. The dike breached during the first deluge this month.