Metro Briefs: 20th birthday turns out to be man’s last

A 20-YEAR-OLD man who had just come home from a party to celebrate his birthday was killed when an hourlong fire broke out in his apartment Monday morning.

Salvador Aller Jr. was believed to have suffocated when a blaze struck the two-story apartment on Gen. Julian Street in Barangay Barangka, Marikina City, at 6:55 a.m.

Marikina fire chief Supt. Edwin Vargas said that firemen found the victim inside the bathroom. He added that the other tenants said they tried but failed to wake Aller up as he was reportedly drunk.

They added that Aller had just come home around 4:30 a.m. after celebrating his birthday with friends.

According to Vargas, they were still investigating what triggered the fire in one of the apartment’s second-floor bedrooms.

He added that the blaze, which reached the third alarm, damaged around P50,000 worth of property and left five families homeless.

Nearly two hours after the first fire, a second one struck two houses on Dela Paz Street in Barangay Sto. Niño, also in Marikina City, at 8:35 a.m. Monday.

Vargas said that the cause of the blaze, which lasted for just 14 minutes and reached the first alarm, remained under investigation.

He added that there were no casualties in the second fire which also damaged around P50,000 worth of property.

In Valenzuela City, an hourlong fire hit a sack factory on Maysan Road on Monday morning, damaging around P2-million worth of property.

No one was reported injured or killed as all the employees had yet to report for work when the blaze started.

According to case investigator SFO1 Walter Firmalino, the fire which reached the fourth alarm started at the pelletizing section of the one-story building—the area where plastic is being heated—at 6:21 p.m. It was declared under control 20 minutes after and put out at 7:20 a.m.

The exact cause of the blaze has yet to be determined but witnesses said the pelletizing machine, an equipment worth P1 million, may have overheated. Jovic Yee, Jodee A. Agoncillo

More rapid exit taxiways eyed at Naia

BIDDING for the construction of two rapid exit taxiways (RETs) at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) may begin in June.

The Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) has been eyeing the P300-million project as one of the solutions to flight delays, a frequent complaint among Naia passengers.

According to MIAA assistant general manager for operations Ricardo Medalla Jr., the rapid exit taxiways would reduce to a maximum of five seconds the time an arriving airplane would occupy the runway, allowing another one to land.

The RETs basically allow aircraft to exit the runway at speeds of 65 kph to 93 kph to give way to other planes. Medalla said that normally, a just-arrived plane uses the runway for two to three minutes.

The longer it stays there, the more it causes a delay in the arrival of other flights.

Medalla said that consultations on the design of the RETs were ongoing.

Once the designs were finalized, they would still need to be reviewed and subsequently approved by the Department of Transportation and Communications before the project could be opened for bidding, he added. Jeannette I. Andrade