Three fires broke out just hours apart in Quezon City, Manila and Valenzuela on Thursday, one of them raging for more than eight hours.
The first blaze which started at around 2 a.m. engulfed a plastics warehouse in Hermosa Compound, Barangay Dalandanan, Valenzuela.
It dragged on till 10:50 a.m. as firefighters had difficulty reaching the source of the flames after the structure’s roof collapsed, FO1 Noel Sentillas told the Inquirer.
The warehouse belonged to Tat Plastic Industries owned by Angel and Ma. Teresita Lao. No one was reported hurt.
In Manila, an elderly woman was injured while a 10-month old baby boy went missing in a two-hour fire that hit a residential area in Sampaloc.
Emiliana San Jose, 84, reportedly the grandmother of the missing infant, sustained third-degree burns on her body and was still undergoing treatment at Ospital ng Sampaloc at press time.
“We still don’t know if someone rescued the baby from the burning house or if he was left inside,” SFO2 John Joseph Jalique of the Manila Fire District.
The fire started at around 12 noon from the house of the baby’s mother, Sherrilyn Reinera, a tenant at 320-A Sta. Teresita Street.
The fire spread within minutes around the house and destroyed nine other homes, all made of light materials, before it was declared under control about an hour later, Jalique said.
In Quezon City, 20 families were left homeless after a fire in Sitio Palanas, Barangay Vazra.
It reportedly started from the house of one Amelia Farinas at around 11 a.m. and lasted for about 45 minutes.
Three consecutive fires on one day may seem a lot but they were still manageable, according to an official of the Bureau of Fire Protection-National Capital Region.
BFP-NCR spokesperson Chief Inspector Renato Marcial said the three fires did not require the bureau’s various units to respond to more than one emergency on Thursday.
“Only the fire in Valenzuela required the assistance of fire trucks from other cities in the Camanava area, but those in Manila and Quezon City were relatively small, so their own fire departments were enough to deal with it,” he said.
Marcial said that based on his experience, the BFP would respond to three to four fires at the most in one day.
He said a “nightmare scenario” wherein all BFP trucks would get sent to different sites all at once has not yet occurred, and that this is likely to happen only after a strong earthquake or other major disasters. Kristine Felisse Mangunay, Jeannette I. Andrade, Nancy Carvajal, and DJ Yap