Fire guts down 30-year-old grocery store in Dumaguete
Times Mercantile, one of the oldest establishments in Dumaguete City at 30 years, was among the establishments destroyed by a five-hour fire that broke out along Dr. V. Locsin Street yesterday dawn.
Chief Inspector Manases Bautista, Dumaguete City fire marshall, told The FREEMAN that the fire, which reached the third alarm, started at Parlem's Collection, a ready-to-wear (RTW) clothing outlet beside Times.
The fire at Parlem's caught clothes and parts of the building that were made of light materials, and then spread easily to its neighboring establishments, waking up residents of nearby boarding house behind Parlems and Times.
Arson investigator Fire Officer 1 Mark Susania said the fire struck at 3:16 a.m. and when firefighters arrived at the scene, the fire already engulfed the entire building, prompting other firemen to secure the adjacent establishments, especially the boarding house at the back.
Other responding firefighters came from the towns of Bacong, Sibulan and Valencia, the Filipino Chinese Fire Brigade, and Silliman University.
The conflagration was put under control at 7:23 a.m. and fire out was declared at 12:05 noon yesterday. Bautista said that part of the reason why it took them five hours to control the fire was because they had to withdraw first potentially explosive materials, such as LPG tanks and insecticide bottles.
A certain Gomez of Times said he was still awake while his mother Sofia, 83, was already asleep when the alarm sounded off, but he thought at first that robbers had entered the store. However, when he peeped through the door, he saw fire coming from Parlems. He grabbed his mother and they ran for safety but left his two dogs behind.
At least 15 occupants of the boarding house, at the back of Parlems, immediately tried to flee from the fire, but some of them sustained minor injuries, as a result. They said they jumped through the back portion because responding firefighters arrived without a portable stair.
Senior Inspector Fortunato Villafuerte, deputy chief of the Dumaguete City Police, said two motorcycles and a pet dog were among those that were eaten up by the fire.
As of press time yesterday, investigators were clearing the area of damages and have yet to determine the cause of the fire as well as the estimated cost of damages.
News of the fire shocked and saddened Dumagueteños, as Times Mercantile is one of the oldest business establishments in the city. Professor Rosales Casocot of SU and a Palanca Award-winning writer, noted in his Facebook post yesterday that it was the second time Times was hit by fire.
In 2000, Times' old location on Perdices Street was also hit by fire, as well as the similarly old grocery store Ricky's which also killed two people. It "reshaped how Dumagueteños did their after-hours grocery shopping," Casocot said.
"With Fortune Mart also gone, only Ricky's remain of the Dumaguete of old," Casocot noted, referring to another "business icon" which closed in 2014 after decades of operating in the city.
The present area where fire hit Times and Parlems was the location of Cebu Kitchenette, which was also gutted down by fire years ago.