Manila hotel turns into inferno

Manila hotel turns into inferno

MANILA (AFP): Shocking safety lapses and barred windows turned a hotel in a suburb of the Philippine capital into a fiery death trap on Saturday as residents screamed in vain for help.

At least 75 people died after the blaze broke out on the third floor of the budget Manor Hotel in Quezon City at 4:30 a.m. local time.

Firefighters battled to rescue hotel guests trapped in their rooms by iron bars on the windows and balconies.

Whole families could be seen gripping the metal grilles in terror, weeping and calling for help as firefighters doused them with water to try to cool them down.

Firemen used circular saws to cut through some of the bars and succeeded in pulling a few people through the windows and onto elevated ladders on the fire engines.

Although some of the victims suffered burns, the vast majority of those killed died from suffocation due to smoke inhalation. The only marks on their bodies were black patches of soot around their mouths and nostrils.

From the outside, the six-story hotel did not even appear to be damaged by the fire that reportedly originated from an electrical spark.

Only the interior of the third and fourth floors were clearly ravaged by the flames but on the undamaged upper floors, dead bodies were found in hallways and rooms.

Hours after the fire was brought under control, firemen were still pulling bodies from the building.

The corpses of a man and his wife were found huddled in a bathroom on the sixth floor. "Let's try to revive these two," a paramedic was heard saying as the couple were taken down.

The hotel's garage was turned into an impromptu morgue as the bodies were taken out and checked for identification.

Paramedics tried to revive some of those taken out but without success.

In the absence of body bags, the deceased were wrapped in blankets or any other pieces of cloth that could be found. The bodies were later taken to a police camp where they were lined up in rows at a covered basketball court so relatives could try to identify them.

A huge blackboard was set up listing the dead who had been identified as well as the names of the injured.

The large number of victims who apparently died of suffocation immediately raised suspicions that the hotel had not provided sufficient safety measures such as water sprinklers, fire alarms, emergency lights and well-designated fire exits.

Survivor Abner Romano said in a radio interview that there were no emergency lights, no sprinklers and no warning bell. He and the other people in his room only discovered the hotel was on fire when someone began banging on the doors of their rooms.

President Gloria Arroyo visited the hospital where some of the survivors were being treated and then went to the police camp where the bodies of the dead were taken.

"Thank God you survived," Arroyo was heard telling Ricardo Dumag, a man suffering from injuries after he jumped from one of the upper floors during the fire.

Fire marshal Ricardo Nemenze said that two months ago, an inspection had found that the hotel had violated certain safety regulations. The owners were given up to 30 days to rectify this but Nemenze did not say whether they took the necessary measures.

Nemenze also said that the installation of immovable metal bars on the windows was a violation of fire safety rules.

Almost all the people in the hotel were members of "God's Flock", a religious group attending a conference for born-again Christians in Manila.

It was the worst fire disaster to hit the country since a 1996 blaze in Ozone Disco, also in Quezon City, which killed about 160 people. Most of them were teenagers celebrating the end of the school year.