Last Friday, at 30 minutes before seven in the evening, there was a fire across the street, both from our rented apartment and from my aunt’s house. Well, here’s Wikimapia for your reference.

The place where I live is marked in blue, my aunt’s house is marked in black, and the firezone in red. The road at the left of the firezone is named Sampaguita, the road at the right of the basketball court is Kampupot, and below, 10th Avenue.

I had just finished eating dinner and was about to open the TV when a neighbor came in shouting, “May sunog sa Kampupot!” (There’s a fire at Kampupot!) So off I went, and saw the blaze. People were in panic mode, running away with their belongings and loved ones. Some were crying, even if they were not affected by the blaze. The direct victims of the fire were able to save nothing but the clothes they were on.

Dad kept on calling two phone numbers, supposedly for some fire engines. One was a wrong number, the other was busy. But when he got through, the operator answered that they were already swamped by calls for the same incident, and that fire engines were on their way.

I went near the fire as it blazed, and took some shots using my Sony Ericsson P1i phone. Here are some shots:

There was this mother with a little girl who stayed at a walkway going inside our aparment complex. The mom was done crying. All she was able to save was several thousand pesos, her daughter, and nothing else. The father was at the fire site, looking helplessly as their house was razed. I know, it was useless, but I think he was afraid to face his daughter when the kid begins asking difficult questions.

Which the kid did.

While the fire was razing (and I was done looking around), the kid asked her mom, “Pwede na tayo umuwi?” (Can we go home now?). And when her father arrived, she asked, “Pa, yung bike ko?” (Pa, where’s my bike?)

The fire was completely put out by 10PM. Here’s a news report by GMA7 (correction: Kampupot is a street, not a village). According to some witnesses, the cause was overloaded electrical wires due to illegal connections.