Cebu mall fire may take 2 days to put out, officials say

[Chris Duffy 1,257]

ABS-CBN News

Posted at Jan 06 2018 02:44 PM

• 

Thick black smoke continues to billow from the Metro Department Store and Supermarket building of the Metro Ayala Center Cebu, Saturday, January 6, 2018. Immae Lachica, ABS-CBN News

MANILA - Local disaster officials on Saturday estimate that it may take 2 days before firefighters could fully put out the blaze that hit the department store building of the Metro Ayala Center in Cebu City.

The Cebu City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office made the announcement following the issuance of a haze alert as smoke made roads at the Cebu Business Park's commercial area dangerous. 

 

• Haze alert up in Cebu City as mall fire rages on

In a statement, Metro Retail Group Inc assured the public that all customers and mall personnel have been safely evacuated.

"The Metro and Ayala Center Cebu Emergency Brigade Teams are closely working with the Bureau of Fire Protection and other emergency response teams to manage the situation," said Vincent Tomaneng, chief legal counsel of Metro Retail Stores Group Inc.

He added that the mall management is closely coordinating with mall merchants on operational concerns.

Fire began at the 6-story department store's toy stockroom at the 3rd floor around 9:30 p.m. 

As of this posting, firefighters have yet to declare the blaze under control more than 16 hours since the fire began.

[Chris Duffy 1,257]

It appears as if she is a goner

 

 

[coa24 69]

How many mall fires does this make now in the Philippines? It seem several in just a short time frame which makes it suspicious. 

[Chris Duffy 1,257]

19 hours ago, coa24 said:

How many mall fires does this make now in the Philippines? It seem several in just a short time frame which makes it suspicious. 

The Gaisano family has a long history of their stores burning down when the family has something better in mind. Metro is owned by one of the Gaisano brothers. The Gaisano South store in Cebu City burned down shortly after they had built another store in the downtown area.

 

Seems very suspicious to me as well.

[mangkanor 1]

8 hours ago, Chris Duffy said:

The Gaisano family has a long history of their stores burning down when the family has something better in mind. Metro is owned by one of the Gaisano brothers. The Gaisano South store in Cebu City burned down shortly after they had built another store in the downtown area.

 

Seems very suspicious to me as well.

saw FB comments said that fire sprinklers didn't work.

[Chris Duffy 1,257]

1 hour ago, mangkanor said:

saw FB comments said that fire sprinklers didn't work.

I have seen that also.  I am familiar but not an expert on fire sprinklers, usually each one is independent and runs on water pressure like a sink.  Each fire head sprinkler has a glass on it and once it reaches a certain temperature then it  opens on releases water.  Each head is independent of the other head.

[payxibka 10,045]

9 minutes ago, Chris Duffy said:

I have seen that also.  I am familiar but not an expert on fire sprinklers, usually each one is independent and runs on water pressure like a sink.  Each fire head sprinkler has a glass on it and once it reaches a certain temperature then it  opens on releases water.  Each head is independent of the other head.

 unless the entire system is without water pressure.  US buildings have external hookups for the fire department to pressurize the sprinkler system in the event of a failure

[Chris Duffy 1,257]

21 minutes ago, payxibka said:

 unless the entire system is without water pressure.  US buildings have external hookups for the fire department to pressurize the sprinkler system in the event of a failure

Why would they fail in USA? No water pressure?

[payxibka 10,045]

1 minute ago, Chris Duffy said:

Why would they fail in USA? No water pressure?

Yes.  It is a redundancy.  Particularly in winter cold snaps, water mains break all the time.  We just had one here that took a week to repair.  Any commercial building would have had an inoperable sprinkler system until they got the water pressures back.

 

 

 

 

[coa24 69]

On 1/10/2018 at 3:20 AM, mangkanor said:

saw FB comments said that fire sprinklers didn't work.

 The same was true for the NCCC mall fire in Davao that killed 38. 

[Chris Duffy 1,257]

4 hours ago, coa24 said:

 The same was true for the NCCC mall fire in Davao that killed 38. 

Hopefully some charges will be levied against the people responsible for this