Friday, December 23, 2011
CEBU (Updated) -- It was like a scene from a disaster movie when a commercial building erupted in flames and spewed thick, black smoke while pedestrians clogged the streets.
The seven-storey Gaisano Capital South was gutted by flames that broke out in the early hours of Friday and lasted more than 18 hours.
The fire at the corner of Leon Kilat and Colon Sts., Cebu City, highlighted the fire department’s lack of equipment for high-rise operations.
Smoke poured from gaping holes and upper floors, which turned out to be the worst enemy of rescue officials. Debris rained on the ground as the fire continued to raze the building.
Food chains, cellular phone shops, retail stores and other enterprises were forced to shut down, on what would have been one of their busiest days of the year. The mall was supposed to hold a midnight sale Friday.
Traffic enforcers kept vehicles from entering the streets closest to the fire scene.
No one was reported injured.
While most people went about the holiday rush, about 1,000 mall employees were afraid they might lose their jobs.
Cebu City Fire Marshall Anderson Comar said they received the alarm at 12:42 a.m. from a security guard who was on duty when the fire began.
Initial reports revealed an explosion was heard within the mall’s ground floor area, followed by thick smoke coming from the receiving area.
All of the city’s firefighting units rushed to the mall with the help of neighboring municipalities, the Emergency Rescue Unit Foundation (Eruf), Filipino-Chinese Fire Brigade, barangay fire brigades, and the police.
Comar, in an interview, told reporters some unidentified men didn’t let them immediately inside when they arrived, which he described as a setback in the firefighting operations.
Smoke
By the time the firefighters were allowed inside, the smoke made it hard for them to breathe or see anything.
At 3:55 a.m., the fire alarm was raised to Task Force Bravo, the highest distress signal.
Operatives of the Special Reaction Unit used breathing apparatus inside, but the intense smoke hampered their movements.
Only 30 combined breathing apparatus were available from the Cebu City Fire Department and Bureau of Fire Protection in Central Visayas. Each unit could sustain a firefighter for less than an hour inside a smoke-filled area.
A helicopter from the Philippine Air Force (PAF) hovered above the fire scene, to monitor developments.
Three aerial ladders also weren’t much help after they broke down during the emergency operations.
Firefighters had to use a boom truck from the Visayan Electric Company (Veco) and City Traffic Operations Management (Citom) to manually break the glass windows of the mall for ventilation, or at least to flush the smoke out.
In the spirit of bayanihan, rescue volunteers deployed on orders of retired Major General Victor Garcia, vice president for security of Metro Stores, aided in the firefighting operations.
Cave-in
Sixty armed operatives from the Cebu City Police Office (CPPO) led by Inspector Arnel Banzon helped control the crowd.
Comar said he suspected the fire came from the engine and delivery and stock rooms of the mall, which they could not get into because it was already 140 degrees Celsius inside.
While their operation was ongoing, black smoke billowed after another eruption at 2:42 p.m. inside the McDonald’s outlet across the mall.
Firefighters were put to the test but were able to extinguish that fire that lasted no more than five minutes inside the fast food outlet.
Initial reports revealed a generator reportedly exploded after it overheated.
Diners who were having a late lunch scrambled away from the food outlet to avoid getting trapped.
At 3 p.m., a group of firefighters penetrated the mall and reached the second floor.
However, they had to run out after some floors caved in and they noticed some cracks.
The roof of the seventh level caved in, forcing the firefighters to briefly suspend operations.
Losses
December is usually the best season for retail operations, which was why the timing couldn’t have been worse for Gaisano Capital and its tenants.
Connie Lavado, an optometrist of the Fernandez Eye Clinic, told Sun.Star Cebu they lost almost P12 million worth of items, cash and checks.
Boxes of eyeglasses were recently shipped out from Surigao City in Mindanao and stored inside the establishment. The clinic is one of the tenants of the mall, the first of the chain of 17 stores run by the Gaisano Capital Group.
The store also houses the offices of the Gaisano Capital Group on the upper floors.
It was the first Gaisano Capital put up by Edmund S. Gaisano as a spinoff of Gaisano Bros., the retail venture of the five Gaisano brothers who founded the old White Gold Store.
As of this year, Gaisano Capital has 17 branches in the Visayas and Mindanao.
Eric Labrada, the mall’s liaison officer, said there was no estimate yet as of 9 p.m. as to how much damage the fire had caused.
Openings
Corporate operations will resume on Monday, he said. Labrada also denied speculations the fire was not accidental.
“Why would we set our store on fire? We are even opening three more soon. That’s just baseless. A malicious accusation,” he said.
Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama has tasked the Department of Manpower Development and Placement (DMDP) to make an inventory of the employees that will be displaced by the fire, if any.
He made this pronouncement after spending hours trying to manage firefighting operations.
Rama said the DMDP can help recommend jobs for the displaced employees because the department is in a better position to know about job openings in the different companies.
He will also task the Police Coordinating and Advisory Council as well as staff from the Office of the Mayor to look into possible lapses of the Cebu City Fire Department.
He wondered why Comar and his team did not insist on going inside the store when they were allegedly stopped by the security guard at the entrance.
“Why didn’t they insist? That aspect will have to be looked into,” said Rama. (With JGA of Sun.Star Cebu)
Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on December 24, 2011.
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