Two hundred sixty individuals were left homeless after a Saturday midmorning fire razed 33 houses in Upper Tabukanal, Barangay Pardo, Cebu City.
This development increased the number of people displaced by separate fire incidents in Metro Cebu in a span of six days to 1,781 individuals.
The Pardo fire is the fifth fire incident to hit Metro Cebu in six days — the first was the Barangay Calamba, Cebu City fire on Monday which destroyed 218 houses and displaced 1,355 people; a few hours later, a fire hit Barangay Subangdaku in Mandaue City leaving 166 individuals homeless. On Friday, an afternoon fire destroyed two junk shops and a water refilling station in Barangay Bankal, Lapu-Lapu City. This was followed by another fire in late evening at Barangay Luz, Cebu City, where a room of an ancestral house of Rolando de Vebar was gutted by fire.
The damage to property in the five fires is pegged at nearly P4 million — the Subangdaku and Calamba fires — P3 million; the damage to property of the Bankal fire was estimated by fire investigators at P200,000 although the owner of a junk shop claimed the equipment lost in the fire cost at least P5 million; and the damage to the Pardo fire was estimated at P200,000.
For the Pardo fire, SFO2 Emillano Dano of the Bureau of Fire and Protection said that they were still investigating the cause of the fire, but they were also looking into reports that a spark was seen in a wire outside the house of Romeo Ceraz Jr., the owner of the house where the fire was reported to have started.
“Naay alegasyon nga naay nibuto sa balay ni Ceraz, pero sa pag-interview kang Ceraz, according niya, kuryente kuno gikan sa poste ang hinungdan, unya didto sa iyang third floor iya gud ning gihimo nga shellcraft shop, naa siya’y gi-store didto nga ginagmay nga mga chemicals gamit sa iyang shell shop. Mao toy nidakop sa kayo,” Dano said.
(There are allegations that an explosion was heard in the house of Ceraz prior to the fire, but during our interview with Ceraz, he claimed that an electrical wire from a nearby post was the start of the fire. He claimed that from the fire travelled from the wire on the post to the third floor of his house where chemicals for his shell shop were stored. This caused the fire to go bigger), Dano said.
Ceraz’s ground and second floors were used as their residence, while the third floor was used as storage of the chemicals for their shell handicraft business.
Dano said it took them a while to enter the area because access to the area was small and could not accommodate the firetrucks.
Some of the fire victims yesterday stayed near their razed houses while most of them were staying at the Barangay Pardo gymnasium.
Meanwhile, Lorna Boses, 54, one of the fire victims claimed that her two-year-old grandson was missing.
Boses said that Lonel Ancajas was last seen running outside their house.
Some residents in the area also claimed of looting by some men who entered the area, an allegation which was denied by the police officers of the Pardo Police Station.