Philippine President Gloria Arroyo yesterday ordered a thorough investigation of a Manila hotel blaze that killed 72 people and said those responsible would be prosecuted.
Investigators were rummaging through the gutted interior of the Manor Hotel in Manila's Quezon City suburb, trying to determine the cause of the blaze. Officials said the hotel had been warned last year about its poor safety standards.
Fire Chief Francisco Senot said there was a report from a witness that a hotel fire exit was padlocked shut.
PHOTO: AP
All the victims of the early Saturday blaze were apparently Filipinos, mostly from the provinces and in Manila for a weekend gathering organized by Christian evangelists.
The hotel is in a lower middle-class area, far from the capital's tourist districts.
"The president said she wants a complete investigation to find out who was responsible, that the culprits will have to be charged," Interior Secretary Jose Lina said.
Investigators said the two-hour fire which broke out before dawn on Saturday started in a karaoke bar on the third floor as a steady rain pelted the Manila area.
City officials had said that 75 people were killed but Senot said yesterday 72 bodies had been recovered and only one was charred, suggesting that the others died of asphyxiation.
About 50 people were injured.
It was the worst fire disaster in the country since March 1996, when 160 people, mostly teenagers, were killed in a discotheque, also in Quezon City.
Under the law, establishments are entitled to four notices of failure to comply with the safety code before they can be closed down, unless they rectify the flaws, fire officials said.
Quezon City Mayor Feliciano Belmonte told Manila's ANC television the hotel owner had contacted authorities but had yet to appear, presumably because "he is talking to his lawyers."
Belmonte said relevant officials would be punished if it was discovered that safety rules were ignored or poorly enforced.
"We have to pinpoint responsibility. ... We mean business. I hope heads will roll," Belmonte said.
Manila newspapers said the hotel had violated some building codes.
"The bodies told the story," said the Philippine Daily Star. "They weren't charred; most of them weren't touched by flames at all. Instead, the victims had suffocated to death, trapped in a building with inadequate fire safety facilities."
"There are many other buildings in Metro Manila that blatantly violate fire safety rules. How many more horrific fires will it take before officials come down hard on the owners of these death traps?"
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
RSS