Pasay City blaze leaves 1,000 families homeless

PASS THE BUCKET. The menfolk of Barangay 130 in Pasay City race against time and raging flames on the rooftops during Thursday’s midday blaze. The fire, the second to hit the area after 1996, left an estimated 1,000 families homeless. RICHARD A. REYES

MANILA, Philippines—She’s been preparing for Thursday’s emergency for the last 19 years.

The traumatic experience from a fire that hit her Pasay City neighborhood in 1996 remained vivid for Lina Nupable. That’s why even before Barangay 130-Zone 13 again went up in flames, her clothes and other valuables were already stuffed inside a big purple bag.

“Our house then was totally destroyed and we had to rebuild everything after that fire,” Nupable said, recalling the tragedy that taught her family a lesson about being prepared well ahead for another inferno.

This time, Nupable’s home was only partially damaged as Thursday’s blaze spread through an estimated 400 homes, some of them along a creek, on M. dela Cruz and Virginia streets.

The Pasay fire department said some 1,000 families were rendered homeless. No serious injuries were reported but at least one resident, Wilma Martin, 54, was briefly trapped inside her house and collapsed due the thick smoke.

The blaze started around 11 a.m. and firefighters took about two hours to put it out, their effort hampered by the narrow alleys and strong winds. Some of the responding teams ran out of water in their fire trucks and had to rely on the residents for help to get supply from the nearby Pasay City North High School.

Quoting witnesses, city fire marshal Chief Insp. Douglas Guiyab said the fire was caused by an unattended candle inside one of the houses in the area that had no power supply for the past several days. The flames easily spread to the other structures made of light materials, he noted. Maricar Brizuela