Child killed, 10,000 lose homes as blaze destroys slum district
Manila mayor vows to repair houses but makes no firm commitments
Manila: Nearly 10,000 people lost their homes and a child was killed yesterday after fire razed one of the Philippines' largest slums, authorities said,
A five-year-old boy died and six others including a firefighter were wounded, and 2,000 families — about 10,000 people — were displaced when 500 homes were destroyed by the fire that engulfed the Bahay Toro slum area in suburban Quezon City, a TV report said.
Manny Martinez, 5, of Sinagtala Compound in Bahay Toro village, was killed while he, his older brother and mother were trying to escape from their house.
The home collapsed after the fire started at 9pm on Monday. However some reports said he was sleeping when the house was ravaged by the fire.
Two houses in the nearby posh congressional village also burned down, said a radio report.
Some of those families yesterday pitched makeshift tents near the devastated slum as charities distributed rice and noodles. Sitting under a tarpaulin with her three unemployed adult children and four young grandchildren Morena Leoncito, 58, said she was worried about food and shelter for her family over coming days.
"We lost everything except the clothes on our backs. Our first priority had to be the children," the widow told AFP.
Her family did not want to join the several thousand survivors sheltering at a covered basketball court several blocks away.
The city mayor visited the fire victims earlier yesterday, Leoncito said, pledging to repair the slum but making no firm commitments on providing building materials.
Slum fires are a frequent hazard in the Philippine capital of 12 million people, highlighting Manila's sprawling poverty and the cramped, dangerous conditions in which poor families often live.
Another blaze two kilometres away from Bahay Toro a week earlier razed 600 shanties and left 20,000 people homeless, Albino said. On January 29, fire struck another slum in Manila district of Navotas, killing 12 people and destroying 100 shanties, authorities said.
