CEBU CITY—A man said to be suffering from a mental illness died in the fire that gobbled 127 houses and displaced at least 175 families in a densely populated area in Barangay (village) Punta Princesa, Cebu City shortly before 6 p.m. Wednesday.
The charred body of Domingo Gacasan, in his 50s, was pulled out from the debris of the house of his mother-in-law Gregoria Bacon by fire and police authorities Thursday morning .
Cebu City fire marshall, Senior Superintendent Aderson Comar, said on Thursday that they called up the homicide section of the Cebu City Police Office to recover the body, which was later brought to a funeral home.
Earlier, Comar had said that they were checking the cause of the fire, which was believed to have started at Bacon’s house in Sitio (sub-village) Trinidad, Punta Princesa at 5:44 p.m. on Wednesday.
Comar said the cause of the fire had not been determined as of Thursday morning, but some residents said they heard an explosion coming from the second floor of Bacon’s two-story house before the fire broke out.
Bacon, in her 70s, confirmed that the fire started on the second floor of her house. She said she was tending her store on the ground floor of her house when she heard neighbors shouting that the second floor of her house was on fire.
“He (Gacasan) must be the one who started the fire because he was alone on the second floor and he was mentally disturbed,” Bacon said in Cebuano.
She added that they did not know that Gacasan had died until around 7 a.m. on Thursday, when the authorities found his body.
Comar said the blaze quickly spread to three other sitios – Mercom, Tuburan and Acra – and ate away at least 127 homes before firefighters were able to control the fire at 7:36 p.m., or after an hour and 36 minutes from the time the fire started on Wednesday.
Camilo Lopez, a hotel cook, suffered burns in the arms and face after he tried to save his computer games console from his burning house.
Comar said the fire displaced 175 families, of which at least 80 sought shelter at the Barangay Punta Sports Complex. Others, however, opted to stay at the areas where their houses used to be.
Most of the victims failed to save their belongings.
Comar pegged the damage caused by the fire at P354,000 since most of the houses were made of light materials.
The fire in Punta Princesa was the second to hit in Cebu City in four days.
Last Saturday, 100 homes were destroyed by a fire that struck an urban poor area in Barangay Tejero and displaced around 1,000 persons.