INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
ILIGAN CITY — Two children perished in a two-hour blaze that razed 37 houses in the coastal village of Bucana, Barangay Titunod in Kolambugan, Lanao del Norte last Sunday.
The fire broke out at about 9:50 p.m., according to Ernesto Valle, Kolambugan’s municipal disaster risk reduction and management officer.
Valle said the two children, aged 4 and 6, were trapped as the blaze developed fast. Their mother first secured her one-year old child when the inferno already engulfed their house when she tried to go back, added Valle.
The children’s father were out fishing when the incident happened.
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“When the injured mother returned and attempted to save their two children, she could no longer enter their house because of the thick smoke and raging blaze,” Valle said.
Valle said 35 houses were completely razed to the ground while two were damaged.
Firetrucks and firefighting teams from Maigo, Bacolod, and Tubod towns, and from the Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, responded to the fire call as Kolambugan does not yet have its own firetruck after an old one had been rendered unserviceable.
The fire was eventually put off st 11:50 p.m.
Valle said the fire victims are temporarily sheltered at the Kolambugan gymnasium and were already given initial relief assistance.
Senior Fire Officer 4 Darwin Enerio of the Kolambugan station of the Bureau of Fire Protection, estimated the damage at P960,000.