Seventy-two people died when a fire tore through a footwear factory in Metro Manila, authorities said yesterday, while survivors blamed barred windows for the disaster and described sweatshop conditions.
Nearly all of those killed in Wednesday’s five-hour blaze were trapped on the second floor of the two-story building, unable to break steel bars over the windows, according to survivors and Philippine Secretary of the Interior Mar Roxas.
“They were screaming for help, holding on to the bars,” factory worker Randy Paghubosan, one of the few on the ground floor who escaped, told reporters as faint smoke still billowed from the ruins.
Photo: AP
“When we could no longer see their hands, we knew they had died,” Paghubosan said. “They died because they were trapped on the second floor.”
Roxas promised justice for the people killed as he expressed anger over a lack of fire exits and the reported cause of the blaze — welding that was being carried out near flammable chemicals.
“Why was welding work allowed near all those chemicals? Why were the second floor windows enclosed in steel bars? Why were 69 of the 72 on the second floor,” Roxas asked after meeting with relatives of the people killed.
The factory, among a long row of similar businesses in the rundown district of Valenzuela on the northern edge of the Philippine capital, made cheap slippers and sandals for a local market.
The factory workers toiled for well below minimum wage while surrounded by foul-smelling chemicals and had no fire safety training, according to survivors, relatives and the nation’s biggest union.
“The families can’t help but be angry about what happened. We will never forget this,” Rodrigo Nabor, whose two sisters were inside the factory and presumed dead, told reporters.
Nabor was among relatives of factory workers waiting for body bags at a village hall that had been converted into a makeshift morgue.
Nabor said his sisters, Bernardita Logronio, 32, and Jennylyn Nabor, 26, often complained of foul-smelling chemicals in their workplace.
“They said they keep an electric fan on to drive some of the smell away,” he said.
Nabor said their pay depended on how many flip-flops they finished, which could be as little as 300 pesos (US$6.70) a day. Nabor’s sisters each had a young child.
The minimum wage in Manila is 481 pesos a day.
One survivor, 23-year-old Lisandro Mendoza, said he escaped by running out a back door, but that the company had not conducted any fire safety education or drills during his five months working there.
“We were running not knowing exactly where to go,” Mendoza said. “If people had known what to do, it would have been different.”
Mendoza said he worked 12-hour days, seven days a week, for 3,500 pesos, mixing chemicals.
“It’s a very foul smell. I can still smell it even if I have one face mask on top of the another,” he said.
The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, the largest labor federation in the nation, said its preliminary investigation revealed extremely dangerous conditions for the factory workers.
“We found out that the building had no fire exits,” union spokesman Alan Tanjusay told reporters. “They had no safety officers who could handle chemicals ... so there were many health and safety violations.”
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