CALAPAN CITY, Oriental Mindoro -- This time residents of this flood-weary city won’t just twiddle their thumbs and wait for the next floodwaters to hit them.

About 2,000 city dwellers and government employees have joined the “Oplan Sandbag,” a city government initiative aimed at producing 300,000 sandbags to help shield Calapan from the onslaught of recurring floods.

As of Friday, volunteers -- men and women who were mostly flood victims themselves -- made 6,000 sandbags, said city administrator Doy Leachon.

“They joined our activity knowing that they themselves would benefit from it,” said Leachon, projecting a two-week period to finish filling 300,000 sacks with sand.

Those who could not join the sandbagging operation have been providing food to volunteers, city information officer Eisen Lowell Goco told INQ7.net.

Three floods hit this city and five northern towns of Oriental Mindoro province this month, leaving three persons killed and 112,000 people displaced. Damage to agriculture and properties had reached over 100 million pesos.

Incessant rains in December caused the Bucayao River to surge and eventually overflow, breaching a river control dike that shielded Calapan City for three decades from flooding.

The sandbags will be dumped into the dike’s scoured portion -- about 1.2 kilometers long -- as a stopgap measure as repair works on the flood barrier have yet to start, Mayor Carlos Brucal said.

The National Food Authority donated 150,000 used sacks for the project, while relief and religious organizations as well as concerned citizens collected empty rice bags from donors, Brucal said.

“Our understanding is that the damaged portion of the dike could not yet be restored,” he said, explaining that heavy construction equipment could not operate in the area where mud has remained knee deep.

It would take about a week to fill the collapsed portion of the flood control structure with a three-meter-high stack of sandbags, city engineer Benjamin Acedera said.

“The scoured portion is deeper than we expected,” he said, adding that the temporary barrier will have a base of about seven meters.

About 3,000 sandbags were brought to the site Friday, said Acedera.

The project has drawn volunteers even from areas outside Calapan City.

Luisa Abacan, resident of nearby Naujan town, joined city engineers in surveying the area where the sandbags would be placed.

“We’re all Mindoreños, so we have to help each other,” said the 25-year-old Abacan, who works as quantity surveyor in a construction firm in Ortigas, Pasig City.

“This is the spirit of bayanihan [collective endeavor] at work,” Abacan said, who was in the province for the holiday break. She said her father’s rice farm was twice submerged by floodwaters this month.

Governor Arnan Panaligan said the flooding problem in northern Mindoro would be addressed “with several engineering interventions,” adding that a comprehensive study would be done to find out the kind of approach needed to avoid future inundation.

“In some parts, we have to re-channel the course of the river to straighten its course,” he said.

The provincial government had said repair works of the 22-kilometer long water barrier would start once the rains stopped in the Bucayao River area.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ordered Thursday the release of 66 million pesos from government’s calamity fund to fix the flood control structure. Repairs works would take about two weeks, officials said.

Meantime, people have to rely on the sandbags for their protection, they said.