24-hour blaze destroys Manila shopping mall

Manila: At least 17 people, mostly firefighters, were injured in a 24-hour fire that gutted a 30-year-old shopping mall in Caloocan City in Metro Manila.

The fire which started at 10.45pm on Friday was placed under control at 10.30pm the next day, officials said.

Caloocan City Mayor Recom Echeverri said the fire started on the ground floor of the four-storey building and quickly spread.

Superintendent Oscar De Asis, the city's fire marshal, said initial investigation showed the fire broke out from one of the shoe shops on the ground floor.

Light Railway Transit (LRT) trains were forced to bypass the LRT station located several metres from the Ever Gotesco Grand Central Mall as thick smoke reached the terminal.

Amateur footage shown on television showed the mall's security and utility personnel vainly trying to extinguish the fire. Witnesses, including shop owners, claimed that the mall's security had prevented firefighters from entering the premises.

Superintendent De Asis, was quoted in a Philippine Star report as saying that at least 50 government and volunteer firefighting units from all over Metro Manila rushed to the scene.

He corroborated witnesses accounts that mall guards prevented the firefighters from getting into the burning mall "because we were ordered not to let anyone in".

The mall's managers later relented and allowed firefighters and arson investigators to go inside the mall, the report said.

Firefighters were initially thwarted by the thick smoke coming from the building as only a few were equipped with breathing devices.

Community evacuated

Residents of a community at the back of mall were directed to evacuate to a safe place at day break yesterday moments before the burning structure's roof collapsed. A village official said they sent out the evacuation order as the blaze threatened to destroy the mall's firewall.

Arson investigators are still determining the cause of the fire.

The mall, which is owned by the Go family whose business interests included property development, shipping and insurance, was gutted by fire in October 1990.

The 1990 fire lasted for nearly three days, with damage placed at 500 million pesos. Cleanup operations lasted about a week, a Bureau of Fire Protection officer was quoted saying in a Star report.