A firecracker, which people in the area believed was an improvised explosive, damaged a portion of a canal located outside the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in Barangay Kalunasan, Cebu City (CDN PHOTO/JUNJIE MENDOZA).
POLICE are warning people who carelessly throw firecrackers of being arrested after the concrete drainage of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) was damaged allegedly by an explosion caused by firecrackers on Monday afternoon.
Residents living near the jail facility believed that it was an improvised explosive device since the sound is not like any firecrackers they had heard.
“The land shook. Some said it was only a firecracker. But what I have heard was like a bomb exploding. If it was only a firecracker, I don’t think it can create that kind of explosion,” Boy Murillo, a resident in the barangay, said in Cebuano.
Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) of Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) immediately went to the area and checked the situation.
Chief Insp. Sandley Sabang, SWAT chief, said that they only found papers in the drainage where it was thrown.
“We only saw strips of paper strewn everywhere. So there’s a big possibility that the explosion was caused by a firecracker,” Sabang said in Cebuano.
He encouraged the public to report to police any person who would throw firecrackers or set off large firecrackers in their areas and the police would arrest that person.