Discarded cigarette caused condo fire?

MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Fire Protection is investigating whether a cigarette thrown away by a Chinese tenant caused the fire at First Pacific Coast Plaza condominium that killed a resident.

Supt. Robert Pacis, Parañaque City fire marshal, confirmed on Monday that a video circulating on social media was taken by a closed-circuit television camera on the building’s 20th floor minutes before the fire broke out on April 29.

The one-minute, 16-second video showed four Chinese men in the hallway, one of them smoking a cigarette.

The smoker then discarded the cigarette by throwing it on the floor of the balcony which caught fire after a few minutes.

The fire spread down to the 18th floor and to the top of the 23-story building on Villamar Street in Barangay Tambo.

“Our investigation is still in progress but we are considering that the thrown cigarette is the cause of the fire,” Pacis said.

He added that they had identified the owner of the unit where the fire started but not the Chinese men in the video.

“I am asking the building administrator to coordinate with the unit owner and [for] the tenants to come out in the open and shed light on the incident,” Pacis said.