Residents declare West Tower a 'condemned' building

MANILA, Philippines - Residents of the West Tower Condominium in Bangkal, Makati City yesterday declared the building as condemned, a year after an oil leak was first detected.

Architect Bobby Dimayuga, president of the West Tower Homeowners Association, said they decided to pull out all the security guards they hired to protect their valuables from their respective units due to the failure of the First Philippines Industrial Corp. (FPIC) to fulfill its promise to remedy the leak in its oil pipeline that runs underneath the basement of the West Tower building.

“We declared that West Tower is a condemned building. We pulled out everything because our lives are endangered,” Dimayuga said in a telephone interview.

Dimayuga said they are also set to file a complaint against FPIC for its failure to fix the building and to comply with the ruling of the Supreme Court (SC) pertaining to a Writ of Kalikasan.

“To date, the efforts of the FPIC to address this problem (oil leak) have been either insufficient or inefficient. For instance, the installation of blowers in the basements of West Tower Condominium have only aggravated, instead of remedied, the unbearable stench of petroleum coming from the leak,” the West Tower residents said in a statement.

They said the FPIC has not properly addressed their demands for remuneration to cover the building’s electricity bill since they have been forced to evacuate after the discovery of the oil leak.

“The exhaustion brought about by this whole ordeal has led to residents to turn over the building to the care of FPIC in order for the latter to make good on its promises of remediation,” the residents said.

They said while the FPIC has assured them it has an ongoing rehabilitation and restoration plan, since the FPIC “has taken over the hauling of fuel from West Tower’s basement, the toxic fumes have worsened, the water supply remains contaminated, fuel (or) gasoline has soaked the ground and flooded Basements 3 and 4 of the West Tower Condominium.”

The residents said the FPIC has expressed that it aims to get the West Tower habitable by the third quarter of 2011, it also said the remediation of the affected area will take three to five years.

“The possibility, therefore, of the unit owners establishing any form of habitation in the West Tower Condominium is slim to none. Because of this, the unit owners will not return to West Tower unless the whole area affected by FPIC’s catastrophic fuel spill is rehabilitated and remediated,” the residents said.

For its part, the FPIC said it has been working double time to bring back to normal the lives of the West Tower residents and the rest of the residents in the community affected by the gas leak at the portion of the pipeline below the West Tower building in Bangkal, Makati.

The FPIC said it took over the pumping and hauling of wastewater from the West Tower basements after the previous contractor, hired by West Tower residents, did not meet government standards. The firm said it has completed and submitted all documents required by the residents and secured necessary permits from concerned agencies so it can start cleaning up the basement.

The FPIC said that on March 3, the city engineer’s office told the West Tower Association to allow FPIC to start removing wastewater from the building’s basement.

“FPIC contracted three waste treaters to haul and transport the wastewater to their respective treatment storage and disposal facilities. Pumping and hauling started last March 9 and are continuously being done daily from 8 a.m. to (midnight). An average of nine lorry trucks arrive daily on site to haul and transport the wastewater,” the FPIC said.