Fire at Comelec ‘accidental’

The fire that gutted the Commission on Elections (Comelec) building in Intramuros, Manila last month was "accidental in nature," caused neither by arson nor terrorism, investigators concluded yesterday.

Interior undersecretary for public safety Marius Corpus said the conclusion of the 12-member composite team of the Inter-Agency Anti-Arson Task Force (IAAATF) would lead the government to consider the controversial fire incident as "closed and solved."

Corpus said the IAAATF investigation was meant to trace the criminal liability of any individual, but "since the incident was an accident, there is no one to blame for it."

However, Corpus said a separate investigation would be conducted to determine any liability of the local government and officials of the local Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP).

"We have to determine if the local fire (marshal) conducted the inspection on the building and noted the defects and eventually reported the problem to the local government," he added.

The 10-page final report of the IAAATF showed "there were no tell-tale signs and evidence of arson found on the scene of the fire."

"After thorough inspection and interview from our witnesses, we found no significant indication that the cause of the fire is explosives," said Corpus during a press conference at the Department of the Interior and Local Government building in Quezon City yesterday.

"All the structures found to be stable, no indication of blast or explosive disturbance… there was no evidence that will show that the incident was terrorist-related."

Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno had tasked the IAAATF to look into the Comelec fire that occurred last March 11, or two months before the elections, following insinuations that the incident was intentional.

A month after the incident, IAAATF investigators led by Superintendent Fennimore Jaudian of the Bureau of Fire Protection concluded that the fire started at the ceiling of the power room of the Comelec’s General Services Division (GSD). Investigators pointed out that loose energized electrical wiring connection generated arcs and sparks that ignited combustible materials in the area.

"The fire spread quickly to the other parts of the building due to the wind coming from the Manila Bay area, the building itself being old and its combustibility load," Corpus noted.

The investigating team based their conclusion on the accounts of 17 witnesses and findings from the analysis on the specimen collected by experts from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) from the fire site.

The NBI’s forensic chemistry division also noted the absence of flammable substance in the area.

Corpus noted that authorities also concluded that the presence of a fuel tank in the room where the fire originated did not contribute to the blaze.

Comelec employee Jaime Galgo also testified that the building was old and "there’s no rewiring done on the building." He also noted that old electrical connections and the rats inside the ceiling of the general services division could have caused the fire. – with Marijoe Yu, Jan Camille Canivel