Two fires broke out separately in Makati City Monday morning, destroying roughly P1.5 million worth of property but causing no deaths or injuries.
Makati fire marshal Supt. Ricardo Perdigon said in a phone interview that the first fire started at 4:21 a.m. in a unit on the 16th floor of a high-rise residential building on Ayala Avenue near Edsa.
Although the blaze at the Urdaneta Building reached just the first alarm, “the smoke reached the other floors and prompted an immediate evacuation,” Perdigon added. Firefighters finally put out the flames at 6:25 a.m.
Arson investigators later learned that the unit, which was undergoing renovation, was owned by Renato de Guzman who was out of the country. They attributed the fire to the paint fumes that had accumulated inside the room.
As firefighters were conducting clearing operations, another blaze broke out in a bungalow owned by a doctor in Magallanes Village at 5:12 a.m.
The fire gutted a portion of the structure and burned the ceiling of an adjacent house, Perdigon said. It reached the second alarm before it was put out at 5:29 a.m.
The city’s Bureau of Fire Protection placed the damage to property in the Magallanes fire at P1 million.
“Its cause is still under investigation. But we suspect it has something to do with the house’s electrical system,” Perdigon said.
Nearly a month ago, a huge fire broke out in a slum area in Makati known as the Botanical Garden on Urban Avenue, just meters away from Makati Medical Center (MMC).
It took nearly three hours for firemen, which came from all over Metro Manila, to put out the blaze, which destroyed nearly 300 houses and displaced around 1,000 families.
The fire prompted MMC officials to prepare for an evacuation but luckily, the blaze was contained, making the move unnecessary.