Under normal circumstances, 22-year-old Raymond Lumaley can hardly lift more than 10 kilos of rice.
But when a fire hit his house before dawn Wednesday, he found the strength to carry his 74-year-old grandmother who weighed around 60 kilos down a flight of stairs and over a distance of more than 100 yards just to bring her to safety.
“I could not think straight during that time [but] when I saw the flames engulf a part of our house, I carried my lola (grandmother) because we would end up getting caught in the fire if I had just let her walk,” Lumaley told the Inquirer in Filipino.
His house was among the 100 structures in a densely populated area in Barangay (village) Escopa, Project 4, Quezon City, which were destroyed in a three-hour fire reportedly caused by a lit kerosene lamp that had been left unattended.
Based on a report, the fire broke out at 2:35 a.m. Wednesday and displaced more than 300 families who were evacuated to a nearby covered court.
“We lost everything except for my children’s schoolbooks, which they grabbed as we were going out of the house,” Erwin Alvarez said in Filipino.
Alvarez, who lived beside the house where the fire reportedly started, said that although he and his family lost most of their possessions, he was happy that they were all safe.
“We heard a commotion and then we saw flames coming from the walls and the ceiling [so we] went out [of the house] immediately, grabbing [the school books] along the way,” Alvarez said.
Alvarez, who is blind, added that on an ordinary day, “I can walk in the street without any assistance but that time, I had to be guided because people were running and screaming in all directions.”
Senior Fire Officer 2 Fortunato Alde of the Quezon City Police District’s fire department said that despite a heavy downpour, the fire spread quickly because the flames were fanned by a strong breeze.
According to him, the damage to property was expected to reach around P6 million.
Alde added that based on the testimony of witnesses, the fire started at the second floor of the house owned by the Dulay family at 51 Interior 9 Burgos St., Escopa.
The witnesses said the family had a kerosene lamp that they kept lighted all the time because the electricity to their house was disconnected three months ago.
The fire reached the fifth alarm before it was placed under control at 3:45 a.m. It was put out around 5:30 a.m.
No one was reported killed during the fire but several residents sustained cuts and bruises when they tried to save their belongings from their burning houses.