By Erwin M. Mascariñas
Correspondent .
Butuan City — Seven business establishments were burned to the ground when a fire broke out allegedly in one of the food shops along the National Highway here in Barangay Libertad, on Monday morning.
“We received the fire call at around 11:36 in the morning, we then immediately rushed to the scene of the fire, unfortunately the fire spread rapidly in just a few minutes engulfing several shops in the area, luckily a fire wall on the adjacent buildings prevented the fire to spread further while we tried to put out the blaze,” said SFO4 Rodrigo Canton, Butuan City fire chief.
Canton further noted that they are now investigating where and how the fire started.
“We are still trying to investigate as well as verify eye witness accounts, so we (have) yet to point out how and where the fire started. We saw several burned LPG containers in the scene where the food shops of roasted chicken and another serving fried chicken are located but this is yet to be concluded,” said Canton.
The BFP official has given an initial estimate of about P500,000 worth of damage but he suggested that this is bound to change as the investigation progresses.
Several eyewitnesses in the area pointed out that they saw the fire started from Carlo’s Lechon Manok.
“We did manage to save only five sacks of rice from (the store) but we could not save several more (because these were) inside the store. The fire just spread too fast that in just a couple of minutes it was already spreading like wildfire inside our shop,” said Cindy, who worked in the rice retailer shop.
At least five fire trucks from the BFP and volunteer fire brigades responded and fire out was declared at around 1:00 pm.
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