No place to go

Fire victims return to their burned homes on Sunday, March 18, 2018, to begin the clean up process. Some 2,000 individuals were displaced by the three-hour fire that hit Sitio New Paradise, Barangay Pajo, Lapu-Lapu City on Friday, which also claimed the lives of two young brothers and burned down nearly 400 houses, affecting 855 households. CDN PHOTO/TONEE DESPOJO

By this weekend, unless an alternative shelter is found, a sizable number of the victims of the fire that hit Sitio New Paradise, Barangay Pajo in Lapu-Lapu City will have nowhere to go.

This developed after fire victims housed at the Pajo Elementary School, who were supposed to vacate the school premises today, were allowed to stay inside the school’s classrooms but only up to Friday this week.

Pajo Elementary School officials have agreed to allow the 62 families currently staying in the school to continue taking refuge in the school’s classrooms but it could not be extended since the students would also be holding this month their final examinations for this school year.

According to Elena Berame, disaster coordinator of the Department of Education’s (DepEd) Lapu-Lapu City Schools Division, this was the agreement they reached with the school’s Principal Adela Parsomala during a meeting yesterday.

“They (fire victims) were only supposed to stay for three days. But since we also considered the request of the barangay captain in time for the(ir) reblocking (of the fire-hit lots), we just met halfway. And we agreed to allow them to stay until Friday,” she told Cebu Daily News.

But as a concession for extending their stay at the school, the fire victims would need to vacate the classrooms they are occupying during school hours and only return at night, according to Pajo Barangay Captain Junard Chan.

“Dili na sila pabalhinon. Mo vacate sila during class hours unya mobalik napud sila ineg ka gabie ineg katulog (They were allowed to stay. They have to vacate during class hours but they can return at night when its time to sleep),” he said.

He said it was particularly important that today, as the students of Pajo Elementary School take their final exam, the fire victims would not be around to distract the students.

Chan had been asking the school’s officials to allow the fire victims to stay in the elementary school as their barangay gymnasium is already congested with the other displaced victims.

The fire displaced 855 families or at least 2,000 individuals. Of this number, there are currently 62 families, or around 300 individuals, that are staying in 12 classrooms at the Pajo Elementary School.

As a result, the school is left with only 14 classrooms to use this week, just when the school is scheduled to hold the final exams week for its Grades 1 to 5 students. The graduating Grade 6 students have already finished their exams last week, according to Berame.

What was agreed was for the students to just take their exams in three days – Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday – and in shifts in order to accommodate them in the limited classrooms.

But Berame said that by Friday, the fire victims will really have to he transferred to a different evacuation center so that the school would no longer have to extend its classes, especially with the number of school days already reduced by the Holy Week break set at the end of March.

She said Parsomala would be relaying their decision to Lapu-Lapu City Schools Division Superintendent Marilyn Andales today.

“During the exams (today), we will also have to orient the fire victims about some house rules like the use of electric fans in the classrooms, which are designed for eight hours of use only. It should be properly scheduled especially since they are staying their even at night. It could be dangerous if it overheats,” Berame said in Cebuano.

Calamity fund

Aside from allowing the use of the school’s classrooms, the school has no other responsibility to the fire victims.

The needs of the victims, including those housed at the barangay’s gymnasium and at the Pajo High School, were being taken cared of by the barangay and the city government.

The Pajo barangay council has earlier placed the fire-affected area under a state of calamity, which would enable the barangay council to use P700,000 from their calamity fund to assist the fire victims.

The Lapu-Lapu city government, on the order of Mayor Paz Radaza, has been distributing packed meals to the affected families since Friday evening.

Andy Berame, head of the Lapu-Lapu City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, said the city government has also given out care packages to the fire victims, with each package containing items such as canned goods, pails, among others.

“Right now, their immediate needs include sleeping materials like blankets and sleep mats. They also need clothes since most of them lost theirs during the fire. Housing materials are also needed,” Berame said.

Chan said the fire victims are also in need of undergarments.

“Daghan naman clothes gipanghatag pero wala nato makita ang gikinahanglan gyud nila, the underwear. Most likely wala man silay madala nga butang pagkasunog sa ilang balay (They have received clothes but they need underwear, which they were not able to save when they fled from the fire),” he said in a phone interview.

Moving on

For some fire victims, like the Soroño couple and their four young children, they could no longer wait for the housing materials from the city government and have started to rebuild on their own.

“Nagtukod mi ginagmay lang. Bahalang trapal lang usa kay mao pay makaya namo sa pagkakaron (We are starting to rebuild our house. It doesn’t matter if we only have a canvass tent for a roof since that is all we can afford right now),” said Alma Soroño.

But like other fire victims, the Soroño family would still need to use the temporary shelter provided by the local government, until such time that their own makeshift home would become habitable.

As of 3 p.m. on Sunday, the consolidated data from Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) showed there were a total of 855 households affected by the fire, which consisted of 528 families and 327 renters.

Soroño, 31, said she and her husband were only able to save some of their clothes and important documents since the fire quickly spread.

She added that even if she would combine her and her husband’s salary as production workers at the Mactan Export Processing Zone (Mepza), it would not be enough to build a decent home.

But Soroño said they desperately wanted to move on from the tragedy.

”Ganahan nami nga makasugod balik. Bahalang ginagmay, pait man gud ng wa kay mapuy-an,” Soroño said.  (We want to be able to start again. It does not matter if we start small because it is more difficult to have no place to live)