Fire in Las Pinas kills two children

MANILA, Philippines — Two children died after a pre-dawn fire of still unknown origin razed their home in Las Pinas, an officer from the Bureau of Fire Protection said Thursday.

Fire Officer 2 Gizelle Corpuz said that the fire in one of the houses on 379 Leonardo Compound, Talon Uno reached first alarm before it was declared out by firefighters around 1:25 a.m.

The bodies of Eloisa Mae Bialza and her younger brother Marc Elvis were found inside the grilled terrace on the second floor of their home. Their mother Marilou Bialza, 40, tried to save them by running back for her them inside their burning home but was prevented by the flames.  She sustained first degree burns on the arms and face and was treated at the Las Piñas City General Hospital.

Senior Fire Officer 3 Gerardo Porli said that the fire started at around 12:30 a.m. on the ground floor of the Bialza household, which also housed a clothes’ manufacturing shop.

Porli said that Bialza and her children were sleeping in their room when the woman was roused by a loud thud from the ground floor.

Bialza left behind her two kids to check on the noise and found her shop ablaze. She tried to put out the flames but her efforts proved futile and when she decided to run back upstairs to save her children, thick smoke and flames had engulfed the stairs.

She told Porli that she heard her children crying for her but she could not do anything.  Even responding firemen were unable to do anything as they tried to destroy the terrace grills to get to the trapped siblings but to no avail.

Neighbors tried to save the two children by dousing them with buckets of water as they waved and cried for help but the smoke was too thick and the helpless kids could only hug each other as the smoke filled their lungs and suffocated them, Porli said.

Porli said that investigators still had to determine what caused the fire but pointed out that the flames quickly spread because of the rolls of cloth strewn around the ground floor.

Corpuz and Porli estimated the damage to property at P500,000.