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Saturday, January 01, 2005
7 die, firecracker stalls razed in Bocaue fire
BOCAUE -- Seven people were killed and dozens of houses and stores destroyed after a fire broke out along a strip of stalls selling firecrackers in the fireworks-producing community of Turo in Bocaue early Friday.
Four other people also remained missing and were feared dead.
Firefighters struggled to control the blaze, which raged for nearly three hours, while dodging exploding firecrackers in Barangay Turo in Bocaue town in Bulacan province, where Manila residents have been trooping to buy fireworks to welcome the New Year.
Fire officials said at least three bodies were found in one house, where firecrackers were manufactured. Four other bodies were found in nearby gutted houses and six people were injured, officials said.
Five of those who died were identified as Dindo Vicente, 18; Mary Jane Okoy, 16; Mark Stephen Okoy, 12; Marcel Okoy III, 11; and Mark Kevin Okoy 9. They were sleeping when the fire struck their homes, located at the back of a row of firecracker stores along F. Aleli Avenue, around 6 a.m.
The blaze affected 1,000 families and hit a portion of the popular thoroughfare frequented by New Years Eve revelers who want to buy firecrackers.
Bocaue Mayor Serafin dela Cruz said the fire apparently started when a man lit a firecracker, which flew into the air then hit a stack of powerful firecrackers in one store, triggering the inferno.
The blaze set off large quantities of firecrackers stored in houses and stores, blowing away walls and tin roofs and touching off successive blasts, which hampered efforts to rescue people trapped in houses, witnesses said. Two cars and two motorcycle taxis were destroyed.
At least 20 stalls were reportedly razed by the fire, it was learned.
Stall owners said they heard loud explosions, like a bomb, before the fire.
Josefino Vicente, 58, wept as he recounted how he rescued his two children but failed to save an 18-year-old son who got trapped in a room that was quickly engulfed by fire and explosions.
"I already got a hold of his arm and I was trying to pull him out. But, I lost his grip," Vicente said, adding he was forced out of the house by the intense heat. "I wanted to run back in but it was impossible to do that minutes later."
Dela Cruz said what happened was a tragedy and a warning for people to be extra cautious in handling firecrackers. "We were so close to a new year and this tragedy happened," he said.
He said he would push through a plan to establish a firecracker-manufacturing zone located far from residential areas in his town, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) north of Manila. The fireworks industry is a key provider of jobs in Bocaue, a poor farming town of 90,000 people with more than 2,000 legal and illegal firecracker factories and stores.
Officials have long banned the use of dangerously oversized fireworks, which maim hundreds and cause deaths and fires each year, but many persist in making and using them in a yearly folly that turns New Year's celebrations into bloody family tragedies.
Superstitious Filipinos believe the noisy celebrations, largely influenced by China's tradition of welcoming a new year, drive away evil and misfortune. (AP/Sun.Star Pampanga)
(January 1, 2005 issue)
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