Pinay one of the dead in Paris hotel fire

A Filipino woman died in the fire that gutted the six-story Paris Opera Hotel in central Paris on Friday, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said yesterday.

Maira Padayao, her Sri Lankan husband Rajpakseo Pisarage and her two children, four-year-old Rouch Padayao and an unnamed 22-month-old infant were among the 22 people killed in the fire.

In a report to the DFA, Ambassador to France Hector Villaroel said the Philippine embassy had already informed the woman’s brother in Lebak, Sultan Kudarat, of her death.

On instructions from Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo, the embassy is coordinating with Mat Ara, a leader of the Filipino Muslim community in France and the woman’s closest kin in Paris.

Romulo directed the embassy in Paris to arrange for a consular representative to accompany Ara to the morgue at the Institut Medical Legal in Paris to confirm the woman’s identity.

Ara told embassy officials that Padayao and her children will be buried according to Muslim custom.

Police authorities in Paris reported that the fire killed 22 people, half of them children.

A woman, identified as the girlfriend of a hotel guard, was detained on Monday in connection with the fire.

The origins of the fire remain unknown but the police have taken the woman into custody to question her whereabouts at the time of the fire.

Under French laws, she could be held up to 48 hours.

The hotel, in Paris’ 9th district, housed mostly poor people who were placed there by social services.

Two associations that work with immigrants and the needy, Right to Housing and Rights First, demonstrated near the hotel to denounce "the scandalous treatment the government reserves for the poor and needy."

Authorities estimate at least 90 people were living in the overcrowded 32-room hotel built to accommodate 61 people.