Towering inferno a challenge to firemen
by Jocelyn Uy
Phil. Daily Inquirer, March 26, 2007
MANILA, Philippines -- Senior Insp. Emilio Langcay, chief of operations of the Makati Fire Department, recalls that fateful noon of April 22, 2006, when a call came through that fire had broken out in a 26-story hotel on Makati Avenue.
It had a darkly ominous ring to it that brought back memories of the tragic inferno that engulfed the six-story Quezon City Manor Hotel in August 2001, killing 74 people. It was the country’s worst fire.
He shuddered at the thought but conceded that fires rarely happened in the country’s financial district. All the same, he had to deal with it.
“Whether it’s a small house or a tall building that is burning, we always expect that it’s going to be big,” said Chief Insp. Rogelio Bucayo, who was the acting city fire marshal when the fire broke out at Makati’s Best Western Astor Hotel last year.
On arriving there, he said he saw the hotel guests had started fleeing. The open windows on the 19th floor were already belching thick white smoke. But Bucayo regarded it rather as a good omen.
“I already had an idea that an ordinary combustible material was burning and that the fire fighting won’t last that long,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
A repeat of the Manor Hotel tragedy appeared to have dissipated.
Forty minutes later, the fire that began in two storage rooms was put out. No one was hurt and damage was placed at P1 million.
There were a few glitches during the operation, said Langcay, one of about 25 firefighters dispatched to the scene.
Fighting fire Pinoy style
Without an aerial ladder truck that could hoist firemen to the 19th floor and the hotel elevator out of commission, the firefighters, in their heavy bunker coats, scaled the building on foot.
And because the building’s standpipe system designed to conduct water for the fire hose attachments also failed to function, they had to carry five bulky 50-foot fire hoses with them up the staircase, Langcay related.
Good thing he took seriously the daily 45-per-minute push-ups and 16-kilometer run back in his training years or he would have ended up too exhausted to function well up there, he said with a chuckle.
The smoke was still tolerable when the firemen reached the “seat of fire.” Without gas masks, they launched the assault “Pinoy style” -- with wet towels on their nose.
Luck was also on their side. But what if it runs out in the next fire?
‘Ticking time bomb’
A Bureau of Fire Protection official, who requested anonymity, disclosed that with the lackadaisical implementation of the Fire Code and the scant equipment and training, tenants of high rises were sitting on “a ticking time bomb.”
“It is practically a suicide attempt for firefighters to respond to fires in skyscrapers at this point as a very high percentage of high-rise buildings are not complying with the law,” he said.
Of the more than 1,000 high-rises in Metro Manila, only 20 percent have complied with the 1978 Fire Code, said the official.
Under the law, a structure that stands 50 meters, or five stories, and above must be equipped with a reliable fire protection system, including sprinklers, fire alarm, smoke detectors, standpipe, smoke purge control, evacuation, intercommunication, ventilation and fire brigade.
Senior Supt. Carlito Romero, BFP director for operations, conceded that the bureau’s capability to respond to fires in high-rises was limited to “theoretical knowledge.”
“The community has progressed in terms of economy and infrastructure, but the fire department has failed to develop with the community,” he said.
Antiquated trucks
The bureau has limited fire trucks, aerial ladder trucks, rescue vans, ambulances and breathing apparatuses.
In Metro Manila, there are five aerial ladder trucks (with a working height of only up to 12 floors), 105 fire trucks, 11 rescue vehicles, 35 breathing apparatuses and a trailer to respond to a weapon of mass destruction. All of these, except for the last one, were purchased in 1982.
The BFP has 1,269 fire trucks and 74 ambulances -- of which 134 and 16, respectively, have become obsolete and unserviceable.
In Makati City, where 484 buildings are classified as high-rise & counting, there are eight functional fire trucks while six are beyond repair, said District Fire Marshal Sofia Mendoza.
“As for the breathing apparatus that we have, its working time is 30 minutes. Meaning, a firefighter has 15 minutes to go inside a burning building and another 15 minutes to go out,” she said.
Inadequate training facility
Both officials agreed that the bureau had yet to implement extensive training for fire response in tall buildings.
At the Fire National Training Institute in Camp Vicente Lim, Laguna, only a four-story tower serves as training facility. The ideal, Romero said, was a 70-story structure.
The lack of facilities and equipment can be attributed to insufficient budget, a perennial problem, noted Romero.
For 2007, the BFP has been granted P4.75 billion with a capital outlay of P50 million -- already 30 percent higher than the previous year’s budget.
“The bureau has not yet decided whether it will be dedicated for fire trucks or personal protection equipments,” Romero said.
But even if the bureau has a hefty budget for state-of-the-art equipment (an aerial ladder truck costs P25 million while an ordinary 1,000-gallon fire truck costs P8 million), there would still be many extrinsic factors to deal with.
The majority of the roads and bridges in Metro Manila have a 20-ton capacity. Modern fire trucks weigh more than that, he noted.
The usually cramped and cable-girdled streets provide obstacles for these vehicles. “In other countries, fire trucks could speed off easily to the scene because electric wires are installed underground,” said Mendoza.
Fire code standards
Eighty percent of high-rise buildings in Metro Manila, which should function as fire trucks in case of emergency, are far from meeting the requirements of the Fire Code. Very few buildings have a fire protection system, which is 30 percent of total construction cost, said Romero.
He said the installation of smoke, fire alarm, smoke detection and intercommunication systems should follow the Philippine Electrical Code. Cables and wires must withstand heat for at least half an hour, fire escape doors should be able to resist smoke for 30 minutes and building occupants must be trained in fire suppression.
Elevators or fireman’s lifts in the majority of the buildings are unreliable.
“No firefighter has ever dared jump into an elevator while a building is on fire. Its function has been limited to carrying heavy tools and equipment needed in the operation,” said Romero.
With too many limitations, the bureau has been compelled to dwell more on the “passive way” of fighting fire: prevention. Ironically, there are more fires during the fire prevention month of March.
Firemen pray hard that no skyscraper would catch fire, not now when they are in dire straits.
“If all else fails, we do not know what will happen … we will continue risking our lives,” said Romero.
The BFP is an attached agency of the Department of Interior and Local Government.
Back to Main page
by Jocelyn Uy
Phil. Daily Inquirer, March 26, 2007
MANILA, Philippines -- Senior Insp. Emilio Langcay, chief of operations of the Makati Fire Department, recalls that fateful noon of April 22, 2006, when a call came through that fire had broken out in a 26-story hotel on Makati Avenue.
It had a darkly ominous ring to it that brought back memories of the tragic inferno that engulfed the six-story Quezon City Manor Hotel in August 2001, killing 74 people. It was the country’s worst fire.
He shuddered at the thought but conceded that fires rarely happened in the country’s financial district. All the same, he had to deal with it.
“Whether it’s a small house or a tall building that is burning, we always expect that it’s going to be big,” said Chief Insp. Rogelio Bucayo, who was the acting city fire marshal when the fire broke out at Makati’s Best Western Astor Hotel last year.
On arriving there, he said he saw the hotel guests had started fleeing. The open windows on the 19th floor were already belching thick white smoke. But Bucayo regarded it rather as a good omen.
“I already had an idea that an ordinary combustible material was burning and that the fire fighting won’t last that long,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
A repeat of the Manor Hotel tragedy appeared to have dissipated.
Forty minutes later, the fire that began in two storage rooms was put out. No one was hurt and damage was placed at P1 million.
There were a few glitches during the operation, said Langcay, one of about 25 firefighters dispatched to the scene.
Fighting fire Pinoy style
Without an aerial ladder truck that could hoist firemen to the 19th floor and the hotel elevator out of commission, the firefighters, in their heavy bunker coats, scaled the building on foot.
And because the building’s standpipe system designed to conduct water for the fire hose attachments also failed to function, they had to carry five bulky 50-foot fire hoses with them up the staircase, Langcay related.
Good thing he took seriously the daily 45-per-minute push-ups and 16-kilometer run back in his training years or he would have ended up too exhausted to function well up there, he said with a chuckle.
The smoke was still tolerable when the firemen reached the “seat of fire.” Without gas masks, they launched the assault “Pinoy style” -- with wet towels on their nose.
Luck was also on their side. But what if it runs out in the next fire?
‘Ticking time bomb’
A Bureau of Fire Protection official, who requested anonymity, disclosed that with the lackadaisical implementation of the Fire Code and the scant equipment and training, tenants of high rises were sitting on “a ticking time bomb.”
“It is practically a suicide attempt for firefighters to respond to fires in skyscrapers at this point as a very high percentage of high-rise buildings are not complying with the law,” he said.
Of the more than 1,000 high-rises in Metro Manila, only 20 percent have complied with the 1978 Fire Code, said the official.
Under the law, a structure that stands 50 meters, or five stories, and above must be equipped with a reliable fire protection system, including sprinklers, fire alarm, smoke detectors, standpipe, smoke purge control, evacuation, intercommunication, ventilation and fire brigade.
Senior Supt. Carlito Romero, BFP director for operations, conceded that the bureau’s capability to respond to fires in high-rises was limited to “theoretical knowledge.”
“The community has progressed in terms of economy and infrastructure, but the fire department has failed to develop with the community,” he said.
Antiquated trucks
The bureau has limited fire trucks, aerial ladder trucks, rescue vans, ambulances and breathing apparatuses.
In Metro Manila, there are five aerial ladder trucks (with a working height of only up to 12 floors), 105 fire trucks, 11 rescue vehicles, 35 breathing apparatuses and a trailer to respond to a weapon of mass destruction. All of these, except for the last one, were purchased in 1982.
The BFP has 1,269 fire trucks and 74 ambulances -- of which 134 and 16, respectively, have become obsolete and unserviceable.
In Makati City, where 484 buildings are classified as high-rise & counting, there are eight functional fire trucks while six are beyond repair, said District Fire Marshal Sofia Mendoza.
“As for the breathing apparatus that we have, its working time is 30 minutes. Meaning, a firefighter has 15 minutes to go inside a burning building and another 15 minutes to go out,” she said.
Inadequate training facility
Both officials agreed that the bureau had yet to implement extensive training for fire response in tall buildings.
At the Fire National Training Institute in Camp Vicente Lim, Laguna, only a four-story tower serves as training facility. The ideal, Romero said, was a 70-story structure.
The lack of facilities and equipment can be attributed to insufficient budget, a perennial problem, noted Romero.
For 2007, the BFP has been granted P4.75 billion with a capital outlay of P50 million -- already 30 percent higher than the previous year’s budget.
“The bureau has not yet decided whether it will be dedicated for fire trucks or personal protection equipments,” Romero said.
But even if the bureau has a hefty budget for state-of-the-art equipment (an aerial ladder truck costs P25 million while an ordinary 1,000-gallon fire truck costs P8 million), there would still be many extrinsic factors to deal with.
The majority of the roads and bridges in Metro Manila have a 20-ton capacity. Modern fire trucks weigh more than that, he noted.
The usually cramped and cable-girdled streets provide obstacles for these vehicles. “In other countries, fire trucks could speed off easily to the scene because electric wires are installed underground,” said Mendoza.
Fire code standards
Eighty percent of high-rise buildings in Metro Manila, which should function as fire trucks in case of emergency, are far from meeting the requirements of the Fire Code. Very few buildings have a fire protection system, which is 30 percent of total construction cost, said Romero.
He said the installation of smoke, fire alarm, smoke detection and intercommunication systems should follow the Philippine Electrical Code. Cables and wires must withstand heat for at least half an hour, fire escape doors should be able to resist smoke for 30 minutes and building occupants must be trained in fire suppression.
Elevators or fireman’s lifts in the majority of the buildings are unreliable.
“No firefighter has ever dared jump into an elevator while a building is on fire. Its function has been limited to carrying heavy tools and equipment needed in the operation,” said Romero.
With too many limitations, the bureau has been compelled to dwell more on the “passive way” of fighting fire: prevention. Ironically, there are more fires during the fire prevention month of March.
Firemen pray hard that no skyscraper would catch fire, not now when they are in dire straits.
“If all else fails, we do not know what will happen … we will continue risking our lives,” said Romero.
The BFP is an attached agency of the Department of Interior and Local Government.
Back to Main page