Six classrooms damaged by fire at Maribago High School

At least nine classrooms are destroyed or damaged by the fire that hit the Maribago High School. | Norman V. Mendoza

LAPU-LAPU City, Cebu — Six classrooms were destroyed and three were damaged by the fire this afternoon, November 17, at the Maribago High School in Barangay Maribago in Lapu-Lapu City.

SFO1 Hadjiluden Samonte, Lapu-Lapu City Fire Central District investigator, said they estimated the damage to property at P160,000.

No one was harmed or injured during the fire that hit the Maribago High School.

Samonte said that they could not yet determine what caused the fire as the security guard on duty did not see anybody inside the school. 

Being a Sunday, he said there were no classes and no students there.

The fire investigator, however, said that they were checking if the fire was caused by an electrical short circuit.

Samonte said that, aside from that, they were not discounting any other possibility as the cause of the fire that destroyed the classrooms of the school’s Grades 7, 8 and 9.

The fire alarm was raised to the second alarm, a few minutes after it was received at 4:45 p.m. The fire was put under control at 5:05 p.m.

This was also the second fire that hit the school because a couple of years ago, a fire destroyed four classrooms of the school. It was believed that a cigarette butt thrown at a pile of dry leaves at the back of one the classrooms started that fire./dbs