A 10-YEAR-OLD girl and her younger brother died in each other’s arms after they suffocated from billows of smoke caused by a fire which gutted their two-story house in Las Piñas City shortly after Thursday midnight.
The bodies of Eloisa Mae Bialza and 7-year-old Marc Elvis were recovered from the terrace—which is surrounded by iron grills to keep intruders out—on the second floor of their house at 379 Leonardo Compound, 2nd Street in Barangay Talon Uno.
Their mother, Marilou Bialza, suffered first degree burns on the arms and face after she tried but failed to save them by running back inside their burning home.
She was taken to Las Piñas City General Hospital for treatment.
Senior Fire Officer 3 Gerardo Porli of the Las Piñas City fire district said the blaze started at around 12:30 a.m. Thursday on the ground floor of the Bialzas’ house which also serves as a dressmaking shop.
Earlier, Marilou and her children were asleep in their room on the second floor when she was awakened by a loud thud coming from the shop.
She briefly went down to check on the source of the noise and found her shop ablaze.
She told firemen that she tried to put out the fire but her efforts proved futile and when she decided to run back up the stairs to get her children, she found her way blocked by thick smoke and flames.
She added that she heard her children crying and calling out to her but she could not do anything. Even responding firemen were unable to do anything as they tried to destroy the iron 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.
By the time firemen put out the blaze which reached only the first alarm at 1:25 a.m., the children were already dead.
Porli said he had yet to determine what caused the fire but pointed out that the flames quickly spread because of the rolls of cloth strewn about on the ground floor of the house.
He estimated the damage to property at around P500,000.