Fire department picks area as firecracker zone

CEBU, Philippines - The Mandaue City fire department has designated a vacant lot near the new public market as the city’s firecracker zone.

SFO3 Sherwin Porcia, chief of the Fire Safety Enforcement Section in a press conference yesterday said it’s the only place in the city that is safe to sell firecrackers, taking into account the law which states that the firecracker zone should be 50 meters away from any inhabited area.

Porcia said anyone caught selling firecrackers outside of the zone will be apprehended.

He said under RA 7183, which regulates the sale, manufacture, distribution, and use of fireworks and other pyrotechnique devices, allowed to be sold at firecracker zones are the so-called baby rockets, bawang, small trianggulos, pulling of strings, paper clips, El Diablos, watusis, and Judas belts.

The fire department had also conducted “Iwas paputok seminars in all the barangays of the city in a bid to prevent any untoward incident as what happened in the city in 2009 when a pregnant woman and two children died while six others were injured when a firecracker stall at the Reclamation Area caught fire.  (FREEMAN)