Thick smoke coming from the fire site in Zone Sili in Barangay Paknaan, Mandaue City is visible in neighboring barangays. (CDN Photo/Norman Mendoza)
A Sunday morning fire left 15 families consisting of 50 individuals homeless after it burned at least seven structures built on a thickly populated community in Barangay Paknaan, Mandaue City.
The presence of narrow roads made it difficult for firefighters to immediately penetrate the fire site, said SFO2 Roel Arcilla, investigator of the Mandaue City Fire Station.
Arcilla said they had to connect their water hoses to reach the fire site in Zone Sili while some residents destroyed water pipes in the area so they could easily fetch water which they splashed on burning homes.
It took 32 minutes for the firefighters to control the fire which was reported at 10:14 a.m.
Damage to property was pegged at P200,000.
John Llyod Quinahan, 18, said the fire started at the second floor of their two-storey house, but he was uncertain what actually caused it.
“Wala na may tawo sa among taas kay init naman. Nahibong na lang mi nga ni kalit na lang og kayo (There was no one at the second floor of our house because of the hot temperature. We were surprised to see the fire start in the area),” said Quinahan.
Quinahan said that they were unable to save anything because he and two other brothers immediately vacated their burning house to ask for help.
Both their parents were out of the house when the fire started.
He suspects that the excessive heat may have triggered the fire which started at the second floor of their house which was mostly made of light materials.
The fire immediately spread to neighboring structures that were also made of a combination of concrete and light materials.
Weather.com posted that temperature in the cities of Mandaue and Cebu was recorded at 29 degrees Celsius at around 10 a.m. on Sunday.