“Singot ug dugo akong puhunan ato (I built that house with my sweat and blood),” said Nacorda, who is more popularly known by his TV name Goliat, the sidekick of radio icon Esteban “Teban” Escudero, whose real name is Julian Bacus Daan.
The Bureau of Fire Protection in Cebu City received the call for assistance at 1:25 p.m. yesterday. It immediately declared a second alarm on the fire that hit E. Sabellano St., at the back of the Señor San Isidro Labrador chapel in Barangay Quiot, Cebu City.
SFO2 Frank Donozo Sr., who is investigating the incident, said they contained the blaze five minutes later. He initially pegged the damage to property at P120,000.
Worth P500T
Donozo said apart from Goliat’s house, the fire also razed six houses, including the house of Ruth Tabas, an account executive of The Freeman.
Two other houses were damaged. No one was reported hurt.
Goliat said his two-story house was completed in September 2005 after he spent years saving for its construction. He said the house was worth more than P500,000, including appliances.
He was filming a television show titled, “Kung Tigas Mo, Tigas Sad Ko,” aired on the Cebu Catholic Television Network, when he learned about the blaze.
Goliat, 40, told Sun.Star Cebu that his family failed to save a single possession. His wife Liza, who had just finished taking a bath when the fire broke out, only had the blanket she had used to cover herself.
Goliat and Liza said the fire started inside the room of their son on the second floor. They believe it was an unattended flat iron earlier used by their housemaid that caused the blaze.
Cell phone?
But the house helper said a cellular phone that exploded was the culprit.
“I asked the firefighters, they told me cell phones don’t explode. I initially thought it was the iron. The housemaid left the iron unattended and she forgot about it,” he said.
Goliat and the other fire victims are temporarily sheltered in the chapel.
Meanwhile, the Cebu City Council declared three areas hit by fire, including the one in Quiot yesterday, under a state of calamity.
The declaration authorizes the City Government to use the calamity funds for relief and rehabilitation efforts in the areas.
2 others
Two fires hit Sitio Mutra 1 in Barangay Tisa and Sitio Panagdait, Barangay Kasambagan last Jan. 19.
According to a report from the Bureau of Fire Protection, they received a fire alarm at 9:41 a.m. from Sitio Panagdait.
The fire burned the house of Francisco Miranda and two other houses.
The fire department put the loss at P300,000.
The blaze in Sitio Mutra was reported around 4 p.m. later that day. It gutted a house owned by Constan-tino Pilapil, spread and burned five other houses, which were mostly made of light materials.
