President Arroyo goes after fire culprits

President Arroyo goes after fire culprits

MANILA (Reuters): Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on Sunday ordered a thorough investigation of a Manila hotel blaze that killed 72 people and said those responsible would be prosecuted.

Investigators were rummaging through the gutted interior of the Manor Hotel in Manila's Quezon City suburb trying to determine the cause of the blaze as officials said the hotel had been warned last year about its poor safety standards.

Fire Chief Francisco Senot told Reuters there was a report from a witness that a hotel fire exit was padlocked shut.

All of the victims of the early Saturday blaze were apparently Filipinos, mostly from the provinces and in Manila for a weekend gathering organized by Christian evangelists.

The hotel is in a lower middle-class area, far from the capital's tourist districts.

"The president said she wants a complete investigation to find out who were responsible, that the culprits will have to be charged," Interior Secretary Jose Lina told Reuters.

Investigators said the two-hour fire which broke out before dawn on Saturday started in a karaoke bar on the third floor as a steady rain pelted the Manila area.

City officials had said that 75 people were killed but Senot said on Sunday 72 bodies had been recovered and only one was charred, suggesting the others died of asphyxiation. About 50 people were injured.

It was the worst fire disaster in the country since March 1996, when 160 people, mostly teenagers, were killed in a discotheque, also in Quezon City. There too most victims were suffocated as they searched for exits.

Locked exit

Senot said investigators were concentrating on the possibility that the fire was started accidentally, perhaps by an electrical short circuit.

He said the hotel had been served notice as far back as August last year for alleged lack of automatic fire alarms, obstructed fire exits and a lack of fire extinguishers, and there were witness accounts of blocked exits on Saturday.

"According to a witness, the fire exit was padlocked," Senot said.

Under the law, establishments are entitled to four notices of failing to comply with the safety code before they can be closed down, unless they rectify the flaws, fire officials said.

Quezon City Mayor Feliciano Belmonte told Manila's ANC television the hotel owner had contacted authorities but had yet to appear, presumably because "he is talking to his lawyers".

Belmonte said relevant officials would be punished if it was discovered that safety rules were ignored or poorly enforced. "We have to pinpoint responsibility... We mean business. I hope heads will roll," Belmonte said.

Manila newspapers said the hotel had violated some building codes.

"The bodies told the story," said the Philippine Daily Star. "They weren't charred; most of them weren't touched by flames at all. Instead, the victims had suffocated to death, trapped in a building with inadequate fire safety facilities."

"There are many other buildings in Metro Manila that blatantly violate fire safety rules. How many more horrific fires will it take before officials come down hard on the owners of these death traps?"