In the final week of Fire Prevention Month, tragedy struck in Cebu City. Early last Sunday, relatives and neighbors watched in helpless horror as seven people died in a fire that engulfed a house in a compound that also housed a noodle and ice cream cone factory. Some of the victims managed to reach out through windows on the second floor and grab hold of the hands of rescuers, but the window grills could not be destroyed. Other victims hid in bathrooms but did not survive.

The blaze serves as another tragic reminder of the country’s woefully inadequate fire-fighting capability. The right equipment could have broken down those grills. But even in Makati, one of the richest cities in the country, firefighters could not destroy the window grills of the house of Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. to save his daughter KC, who died in a fire shortly before Christmas in 2005.

Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno, whose department has supervision over the Bureau of Fire Protection, says the country lacks not only fire trucks and fire-fighting equipment but also fire stations. The BFP has only 2,600 fire-retardant suits for 13,000 firefighters. Of 1,600 towns, only 780 have fire stations. Puno is not sure how many fire trucks are working. The last time the BFP bought a fire truck was in 2002, based on a supply order over a year old, signed by Puno during his first assignment as secretary of the interior and local government. Puno said a P3-billion supplemental budget approved for the BFP and the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology was sufficient only to raise the salaries of personnel of the two bureaus to the level of police officers.

In Manila and several other parts of the country, volunteers mostly from the Chinese-Filipino community help put out fires and have even donated fire trucks and other equipment to the BFP. Those resources were not enough to save the lives of the seven in Cebu, who all belonged to a family of Chinese-Filipino entrepreneurs. There will be more of such tragedies until the country makes a bigger investment in saving lives.


Webmaster's note: Decentralization is the key. As long as the chain of command starts from DILG, no improvements can be made because there is no incentive for local government units to act on their own, and it is too expensive for DILG to do all the upgrades. If DILG releases all BFP units to their corresponding LGUs, LGUs will be forced to make necessary improvements or bear the brunt of public anger. Those in central command will resist decentralization because they will lose authority and power, as well as the possibility of making money on the side. But if decentralization is implemented, the logical next step for LGUs that cannot implement fire programs efficiently is privatization.