Philippine President Gloria Arroyo yesterday ordered a thorough investigation of a Manila hotel blaze that killed 72 people and said those responsible would be prosecuted.
Investigators were rummaging through the gutted interior of the Manor Hotel in Manila's Quezon City suburb, trying to determine the cause of the blaze. Officials said the hotel had been warned last year about its poor safety standards.
Fire Chief Francisco Senot said there was a report from a witness that a hotel fire exit was padlocked shut.
PHOTO: AP
All the victims of the early Saturday blaze were apparently Filipinos, mostly from the provinces and in Manila for a weekend gathering organized by Christian evangelists.
The hotel is in a lower middle-class area, far from the capital's tourist districts.
"The president said she wants a complete investigation to find out who was responsible, that the culprits will have to be charged," Interior Secretary Jose Lina said.
Investigators said the two-hour fire which broke out before dawn on Saturday started in a karaoke bar on the third floor as a steady rain pelted the Manila area.
City officials had said that 75 people were killed but Senot said yesterday 72 bodies had been recovered and only one was charred, suggesting that the others died of asphyxiation.
About 50 people were injured.
It was the worst fire disaster in the country since March 1996, when 160 people, mostly teenagers, were killed in a discotheque, also in Quezon City.
Under the law, establishments are entitled to four notices of failure to comply with the safety code before they can be closed down, unless they rectify the flaws, fire officials said.
Quezon City Mayor Feliciano Belmonte told Manila's ANC television the hotel owner had contacted authorities but had yet to appear, presumably because "he is talking to his lawyers."
Belmonte said relevant officials would be punished if it was discovered that safety rules were ignored or poorly enforced.
"We have to pinpoint responsibility. ... We mean business. I hope heads will roll," Belmonte said.
Manila newspapers said the hotel had violated some building codes.
"The bodies told the story," said the Philippine Daily Star. "They weren't charred; most of them weren't touched by flames at all. Instead, the victims had suffocated to death, trapped in a building with inadequate fire safety facilities."
"There are many other buildings in Metro Manila that blatantly violate fire safety rules. How many more horrific fires will it take before officials come down hard on the owners of these death traps?"
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS