Mom, 3 kids die in Ozamiz City fire

COTABATO CITY — Four in a family, two of them twins born just last month, died from suffocation while inside their house in Barangay Tinago in Ozamiz City, Misamis Occidental that got razed by fire on Wednesday.

Responders from the Ozamiz City local government unit and officials of the Bureau of Fire Protection had told reporters the victims, housewife Divina Gracia Godiz Gohara and her three children, were trapped in their rented house when the fire broke out in its living room and destroyed its ceiling.

The house does not have a door behind where they could have exited for their safety.

Gohara’s father, Domingo Godiz, was quoted in radio reports on Friday as saying that he and their neighbors tried to enter the burning apartment to rescue her daughter and three children, but balked and moved away as flames engulfed the entrance to the building.

He said the fire started from a power line from an electric post, connected to the apartment.

Gohara and her three children, two of them twins born just last month, sustained not so serious burns in different parts of their bodies, but were not charred beyond recognition.

Fire Senior Inspector Erwin Peter Macamay, acting Ozamiz City fire marshal, told reporters they could have saved the victims had villagers reported to them the incident promptly.