Hundreds of families have fled their villages late Saturday afternoon after a flash flood that inundated a vast area in this southern Philippine port city as a result of continuous rains the past weeks.

Electricity was cut off in villages where severe floodings were reported.

Villagers were seen evacuating in jeeps and trucks, and motorcycles fearing for the worst to come.

A neighborhood in the village of Tetuan, which is prone to flooding, has started putting up sandbags around homes.

Those with no means to buy an expensive bag of sand, which sells around P75 each, resorted to digging earth from idle lands as a substitute to sandbags to stop the dirty water from sipping in their homes.

The flash flood also caused a heavy build-up of traffic along busy streets, but there were no village officials or policemen in sight as the chaos continued to mount.

“Baha na naman kami ngayon. Lagi na lang ganito tuning may malakas na ulan,”Julian Santos said.

The flooding has not spared a hotel in the village of Tetuan as frantic employees rushed to prevent water from entering the establishment, although the whole street outside was flooded that made it difficult for small cars to pass through.

An ongoing construction of a flood control system in Tetuan village that began last year offered little or no help at all.