Baguio market fire displaces nearly 2,000 vendors

GUTTED | A fire that struck two buildings at the Baguio City public market before midnight on Saturday leaves over a thousand vendors devastated. Many of their wares, including fish and vegetables, were destroyed by the time the fire was put under control early morning on Sunday. (Photo by NEAL CLARK ONGCHANGCO)

BAGUIO CITY, Benguet, Philippines — Almost 2,000 vendors in this city were displaced in a two-hour fire that gutted two major sections of the Baguio Market between late Saturday and early Sunday.

The Office of the City Social Welfare and Development opened its doors on Sunday to provide emergency financial aid to displaced vendors affected by the fire that struck the city market at 11 p.m.

Firefighters were able to stop the blaze from spreading at 1:13 a.m. on Sunday, but it took four more hours for the conflagration to completely die down, according to Baguio Fire Marshal Supt. Marisol Odiver.

Odiver said the fire began at the “wagwagan” (secondhand dry goods) section, but fire investigators were still tracing what ignited the blaze.

The Baguio Market Vendors Association (Bamarva) will allow displaced vendors access to money they raised to try and bid for the construction of a modern public market, said Zosimo Abratique, the group’s president.

The vendors began pooling funds in 2020 when the city government considered a public-private partnership with a mall giant to turn the Baguio market into a P7-billion state-of-the-art selling center. The Bamarva offered to undertake the project instead.

Relocation

“The agreement was that [their contributions were] not to be withdrawn. We would now allow those affected [by the fire] to use their savings for their recovery,” Abratique told the Inquirer.

Abratique stressed the vendors have not abandoned their interest in the market project, even after they would use part of the pooled capital to help the victims of the blaze.

Some of the affected stall owners in the gutted Block 4 and part of Block 3 buildings were themselves relocated to these sections after the city market’s fruit and vegetable section was also hit by fire in 2009.

Mayor Benjamin Magalong estimated that 1,700 stalls were lost to the fire in the two blocks, out of roughly 3,900 stalls operating in the market. The two buildings at Blocks 3 and 4 served as a relocation site for peddlers of vegetables, fish, live poultry, and secondhand goods.

City officials would discuss the vendors’ relocation at Monday’s executive-legislative assembly, said Councilor Isabelo Cosalan Jr., chair of the market committee, on Sunday.

Magalong said he would also consider opening some market roads as temporary selling areas.

Fire at midnight

At 5 a.m. on Sunday, vendors gathered outside the burnt sections of the market, appealing to police officers to allow them to salvage any surviving commodities. But they were told to return home because the fire zone was still emitting toxic fumes.

Lara Fontanilla, a fish vendor, said she lost a large supply of assorted fish and shrimps intended for the Sunday market crowd and was worried about where to get fresh capital for her business.

The Baguio Fire Station is located a block away from the burned area, but some of its trucks were deployed earlier to battle a forest fire along Camp 7 on Kennon Road. The city’s firefighters got assistance from firefighting units in Benguet province.

—REPORTS FROM VINCENT CABREZA AND KIMBERLIE QUITASOL