CDN PHOTO / NORMAN MENDOZA
The Super Metro Mandaue Department Store was ordered closed for the day following a fire which hit its fourth floor storage area at noon today.
Customers and employees were asked to vacate the establishment in Barangay Ibabao, Mandaue City to allow investigators from the Mandaue City Fire Department to determine the cause of the fire and assess the extent of damage that it caused on the structure.
“All employees and customers of the store were safely evacuated. No one was injured or hurt as a result of the incident,” store management said in a statement sent to Cebu Daily News.
Store operations will resume at 9 a.m. on Monday.
The mall’s alarm system was sounded while water sprinklers were activated after smoke was seen to come out of the department store’s fourth floor stockroom at around 12:15 p.m.
SFO1 Edson Dapal, investigator of Mandaue City Fire Station said, that smoke was traced to have come from the department store’s locker room.
The store’s statement said that management immediately deployed their emergency response team to spray water on the affected stockroom while they await the arrival of city fire fighters.
The fire was put out at around 1:30 p.m.
While fire fighting was ongoing, mall personnel ushered shoppers outside of the establishment.
Department store management also sounded their public address system to inform the shoppers and their tenants of the need to turn off the building’s power supply.
Dapal several items on the department store’s fourth floor got wet after their sprinkle system was activated.
He said that water even reached part of the store’s third, second and first floor display areas.