Family asks help to give decent burial to 2 boys killed in Pajo fire

THE Cañedo family is asking for financial help so they can give a decent burial to their two young boys who perished in last Friday’s fire in Sitio New Paradise, Barangay Pajo, Lapu-Lapu City.

The two boys – Joko Han, 3, and Kent Zairel, 1, – were children of Jennifer Cañedo, from whose house the fire started.

The fire, which broke out 5:10 p.m. on Friday, raged for three hours and razed to the ground nearly 400 structures mostly made of light materials, displaced 855 households and made homeless nearly 2,000 individuals who resided in the erstwhile densely-populated seaside community.

The Lapu-Lapu City Fire Department (LCFD), as it closed its investigation into the fire, yesterday concluded the fire was caused by three of Jennifer’s children who were playing with matches. Aside from the two boys who perished, Jennifer, a solo mother, has three other children, the oldest of whom is only nine years old.

Maribel Cañedo, Jennifer’s older sister, said that the bones and ashes found in the debris of her parents’ house, where Jennifer and her children also lived, were believed to be the charred remains of her two nephews.

“Ilubong namo pero wala mi kwarta para bayad (We would like to bury them but we do not have enough money),” she said in a phone interview.

She said the charred remains were stored inside a plastic bag and kept in a bowl that was left in the area where the remains were found, where the family had been lighting candles as they prayed for the eternal repose of the boys’ souls.

Negligence?

But as the family continued to grieve for the loss of the two boys, Jennifer could be held liable for the fire, according to Fire Senior Insp. Eulalio Muñez, the officer in charge of LCFD,

Muñez said they would submit their findings to the Central Visayas regional office of the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP-7), to determine if the mother could be held for negligence.

Muñez said their investigation showed that while three of Jennifer’s five children were playing with matches and cooking something at the second floor of her parents’ house, she was sleeping downstairs.