After the fire
It only took three days for an iconic structure that had greeted visitors to the Cebu Business Park for more than two decades to transform into a dessicated husk on the verge of collapse.
Fire struck its third floor last Friday night shortly after the establishment closed its doors to shoppers.
There were reports that the fire alarm system and sprinklers malfunctioned, which might explain why the flames spread to engulf the whole building. It didn’t help that the store had stocks of plastic materials and textiles that were highly combustible.
The Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) 7 has created a four-man investigation team to determine the cause of fire.
Early estimates placed the damage to properties at around P100 million. The number, though, is expected to rise as the Metro Retail Stores Group Inc. (MRSGI) has yet to submit an affidavit of loss to the BFP 7.
People familiar with the layout of Metro Ayala would understand why firefighters did not go inside and why it took them nearly 40 hours to declare the fire under control.
Aside from zero visibility, they also had to contend with the extreme heat, which would have melted their safety gears like boots and breathing apparatuses.
The BFP 7 ended up boring holes at the building to let the fire and smoke out in a method called ventilation, which also allowed firefighters to shoot water from the outside.
Still, the firefighters and the countless volunteers can pat themselves on the back for a job well done in preventing the flames from spreading to the rest of the mall despite being hampered by the lack or shortage of modern firefighting equipment.
Yesterday, Supt. Rolando Orbeta, BFP 7 assistant director on fire operations, told SunStar Cebu they have declared a fire out, which means the last embers have been extinguished.
Members of the BFP 7’s Special Rescue Unit were able to access the mall’s third floor to conduct overhauling operations, but they had to turn around when they realized that the whole floor was compromised by the weak cooling tower, “a heat rejection device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a water stream to a lower temperature.” Or something like that. A portion of the mall’s third floor and the second floor of the department store were also in danger of collapsing, said Senior Insp. Paul Patrick Laude, chief of the Special Rescue Unit.
When all that smoke finally clears, many questions will be begging to be asked.
By the way, the MRSGI recently renewed its lease contract with Ayala for another 15 years.