Christmas Apartment Blaze in Philippines Claims Seven

Dec. 26--Seven persons were killed when a fire tore through rows of apartments in Quezon City at dawn on Tuesday.

Another blaze hit a thickly populated slum area in San Juan City, leaving thousands of families homeless on Christmas day.

The fire in Quezon started a few hours after the Christmas merrymaking in Metro Manila that lasted until the wee hours of Tuesday. Investigators said that the conflagration could have started in a canteen near the residence of Dr. Carlo Felamor, a veterinarian who owned the rows of apartment destroyed by the fire.

Arson probers at the Quezon City Fire Department said that the charred remains recovered were those of Felamor, his wife Korina, 55, his daughter Eva, 26 and her husband Carlo Correa, 25, their sons Mateo Aron, 14 and Miguel Andre, 13. The seventh fatality was the Felamor family's househelp identified only as Marina.

All tenants of the apartments were able to escape before the fire could engulf their units. Investigators suspected that the Felamor family could have been sleeping deeply, thus, they were trapped by the fire.

The blaze quickly spread to the other apartments because these were made of light materials.

Supt. Samuel Tadeo, Quezon Fire department operation commander who rushed to the area, said that the blaze was put out an hour and a half after it started.

Two vehicles owned by the apartment tenants were also eaten by the fire.

Damage to property was initially pegged at P5 million.

Slum fire

Meanwhile, a second blaze broke out at a sprawling shantytown, sparking riots that left one man dead and lead to two suspected rioters being arrested, according to Manila fire marshal Santiago Laguna.

"They [residents] started grabbing hoses from our firefighters, who could not do anything as they feared for their own safety," Laguna said in a radio interview. Volunteer firefighter Willy Tiongson, his bloodied head wrapped in a bandage, told GMA television that his team was met with a shower of rocks and other projectiles as they drove into the slum.

A man was beaten up and later died from his injuries in the melee as the blaze consumed the shantytown in the district of San Juan, he added.

"They mistook him for a fireman," he said of the victim, adding two suspected rioters were also arrested.

Laguna said that residents were apparently infuriated by the delayed arrival of firefighters and took it upon themselves to grab firehoses to aim at their blazing shanties.

However, he said that the residents were themselves to blame.

"Our firetrucks had difficulty entering the narrow streets that were blocked by parked cars and carts," he said.

"Our firefighters had to drag the hoses into the alleys, where they were attacked."

The shantytown blaze left some 2,000 families homeless, he said, a figure that equates to at least 8,000 people.

An Agence France-Presse photographer on the scene saw hundreds of homeless survivors huddled on the floor of two basketball courts nearby.

Laguna said that the cause of the apartment blaze was under investigation, though he added electrical circuits had probably overloaded from increased use during Christmas Eve parties across the metropolis of 14 million people.

Copyright 2012 - The Manila Times, Philippines