Strong winds gave Pasay mall fire time to spread

Officials of the Pasay City Fire Station said they were not remiss in their duties after it took firemen at least 10 hours to contain a blaze that razed a mall in Pasay City Thursday morning.

Pasay City Fire Marshall Senior Inspector Juanito Maslang said they immediately rushed to the area when reports that the Galleria Baclaran Shopping Mall on Taft Avenue Extension was on fire.

“We were among those first on site. There were just several factors that contributed to the difficulty of putting out the fire,” Maslang said.

He pointed out that strong winds and not enough water for firetrucks made it hard for firefighters to do their job.

Earlier, Senior Fire Officer 2 Felix Lazarte, assistant operations chief of the Pasay Fire Station, said that past 6 a.m., the fire has already been raised to second alarm.

“It has also been difficult for us because of strong winds and the mall was still closed around that time. The security guards would not want to open it. We had to go to the back portion of the establishment to avoid the strong winds,” he said.

Lazarte said the stores inside the mall were totally destroyed.

There were around 100 firetrucks that rushed to the area to help extinguish the fire, which reached Task Force Echo, meaning that firemen from all over Metro Manila were needed to control the fire. The fire was declared under control at about 3:35 p.m.

Fire volunteers said the damage caused by the blaze could have reportedly been minimized if only the alarm had been raised as soon as the blaze got out of hand.

The Bureau of Fire Protection is conducting follow-up investigation to determine the real cause of the blaze, which was earlier reported to have been caused by a malfunctioning air-conditioning unit in one of the stalls. – Rhodina Villanueva