THE Davao City Public Safety and Security Command Center (PSSCC) said the city is still waiting for the final result of the investigation of the fire that gutted NCCC mall and killed 38 individuals.
“The City Government will have to wait for the results of the report of the final investigation so that we could undertake appropriate corrective measures on our end. But of course, the lead agency of this case is the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP),” PSSCC head Benito S. De Leon told reporters Wednesday.
De Leon said these measures will depend on the official recommendation of the inter-agency task force created for the tragic incident.
“We will just have to wait and if there are charges that needed to be filed the proper agencies will undertake that,” De Leon said.
Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), the BFP, National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), Department of Justice (DOJ), and Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) compose the whole inter-agency investigation team.
He said that the initial report of the inter-agency investigation only revealed some of the causes of the fire and some of the shortcomings that created the incident.
De Leon, basing from the initial report, said that there are things that should be improved by the BFP.
“The protocols that were undertaken of the officers under it (BFP) were still not enough it appears that based on the investigation undertaken by the Bureau of Fire and Department of Interior and Local Government in their interagency investigation team there were certain violations in the fire code of the Philippines that caused loss of the lives of these individuals,” he said.
De Leon said that huge challenge left by this big fire incident and other fire incidents is tapping the cooperation of the populace to detect fire hazards.
“The responsibility of preventing fire incidents emanates from each of us. The responder of Central 911, Bureau of Fire Protection only comes in to quell and to stop the fire; each of us has to be responsible in order that our environment that we are safe on fire,” he said.