THE Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP)-Davao said the interagency anti-arson task force, who led the investigation on the fatal New City Commercial Center (NCCC) Mall Davao fire, will have yet to submit its report to the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) within this week.
In an interview Thursday, March 1, Senior Superintendent Wilberto Rico Neil Kwan Tiu said the task force earlier requested for an extension for the submission of its full report on the fire incident before the DILG secretary.
"I think within this week, I do not know if today, but I think it is within this week that they would be able to submit their comprehensive investigation report on the NCCC (fire)," Kwan Tiu said.
The Davao City Government is also waiting for the result of the investigation to look for possible improvement on fire safety.
"In fact, I advised some of the management pag naibigay na po yan sa DILG ay pwede pong mag-request ang City Government to know ano po ba yong nakita, ano ang resulta para maiwasan natin yong same incident (if the report has already been submitted to the DILG, the City Government can then request to know what has been revealed, to know the result to prevent the same incident from happening again)," he added.
He underscored that should the result be submitted this week, this will be an eye opener for business establishments and other stakeholders to take precautionary measures to avoid the same incident from happening again.
"Ang ating pananaw is other than mga violation and other doon sa mga dapat managot sa kung ano man ang pagkakamali ang nagawa, ay yon po ang di dapat maulit kaya kailangan tingnan natin, dahil doon po sa report na iyon malalaman natin ang dapat babantayan para hindi na maulit ang ganoong klaseng incident (Aside from the violations committed, and the persons to be held liable, we are looking into what went wrong, and in that report, we will know what are the things we need to be aware of so that this kind of incident will not be repeated)," he said.
It has been more than two months since the massive fire burned down the homegrown shopping mall located in Maa, Davao City. The incident happened on December 23, 2017.
The incident claimed 37 lives of Survey Sampling International (SSI) employees and one employee of the mall after they were trapped at the fourth floor where the call center office is located.
Initial investigation of the task force revealed that the cause of the fire was electrical short circuit that originated at the third floor of the mall, as manifested on the physical evidences they gathered.
Some of the violations they noted were the alarm system of the mall was not interconnected to the SSI office, which was the reason the SSI employees were informed late and by the time they knew about the fire, the smoke in their office already thickened.
Aside from that, the fire exit did not conform to the fire bureau's standard and the fire suppression or sprinkler did not function during the time of the incident.
The demolition of the mall is already in the pipeline after the management applied for demolition permit. It will start after all utility lines such as electric, gas, telephone and water installations have been disconnected.