Student’s death in boarding house fire: No fire exit?

His girlfriend was worried when she didn’t get a text message from him last Saturday.

When she went to his  boarding house in barangay Banilad in the evening, she found only smoke and burned ruins.

The charred remains of  17-year-old pre-med student Adriane Tecson  were   found  by firefighters in a basement room five hours after the fire broke out at 2:42 p.m. last Saturday.

His room lacked access to a fire escape,  boarding house occupants said.

Cebu City Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella, who visited the site, said he would recommend a reinspection of  all boarding houses and schools in the city  to check  fire safety requirements.

“I will ask the OBO (Office of the Building Official) if the boarding house had a permit. If yes, why was a license issued if there were no  fire exits?” Labella said.

Tecson was from Dipolog City and was taking up BS Biology at the Cebu Doctors’ University.

Were it not for the girlfriend, said the vice mayor, Tecson would not have been identified.

He said the teenaged girlfriend had told him that she was with Tecson just before the fire struck.  But when she tried to text him later, she got no reply.

She returned shortly before 8 p.m. and found out that a fire had razed his boarding house.

Light materials
His  remains were brought to  the Rolling Hills Funeral Parlor.

The cause of the fire which started at the home of Raymond Bindo  on J. Panis Street  across the Gaisano Country Mall is still being determined.

At least 24 structures, including boarding houses and food stores of light materials, were heavily damaged.

The fire  left 64 families  or 291 persons homeless.  This included  38 boarders.

Joseph Loreto, one of the caretakers of the boarding house owned by Isabelita Rosales, said he knocked or kicked on the doors of the rooms in the boarding house.

Premonition
“I knocked on Adrian’s room but no one was answering. I thought  no one was inside so I  got out of the building,” he said.

Survivors, women and children, took shelter  at the Banilad Sports Center while the men  chose to spend the night beside their burnt homes to guard the site from looters.

Labella said Tecson’s girlfriend recalled that in their last conversation Friday night,  the student told her he wanted to spend as much time with her as he could because they may no longer see each other again.

“It was like a premonition,” Labella said in a radio interview.

Secure
Labella, who held an  emergency meeting with social workers, said he learned that the  lot occupied by the families in J. Panis Street is claimed by the Co and Tan families.

“Let’s check on the status of the land because the families don’t want to leave. I ordered the police to secure the area so there won’t be any disturbance,” Labella said.

Labella said it would be up to Mayor Michael Rama, who is in Manila, to  decide on how to deal with the fire victims and the lot claimants./ With UPVTC Intern Le-an Lai Lacaba and Reporter Jose Santino S. Bunachita

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