Manilla Fire Leaves 4,000 homeless

[jimmy olsen]

Maybe they should build a fire station near this port, just a suggestion.

http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=0z&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=haiti+death+toll

updated 4:16 a.m. PT, Sun., Jan. 17, 2010

MANILA, Philippines - Fire raced through a slum near the main port in the Philippine capital, killing a 5-year-old girl, gutting hundreds of shanties and leaving 4,000 people homeless, an official said Sunday.

There were no other reports of deaths or major injuries in the Saturday night blaze at the Baseco Compound, a crowded slum along the rim of Manila Bay, Senior Fire Officer Emmanuel Gaspar said. An Associated Press photographer at the site saw people waiting to be treated for minor injuries, including wounds from glass shards.

The cause of the fire, which raged for two hours, fanned by strong winds, is still under investigation, Gaspar said. Fires in Manila's overcrowded slums are common, with the tight living conditions allowing flames to quickly spread through houses made of light materials.

Saturday's fire destroyed 500 shanties.

Families unwilling to leave land
Amid the ashes and a few wooden posts that were left of their home, Amorsolo Villamor's family ate their breakfast of rice gruel Sunday morning, unwilling to leave the tiny patch of land where their shanty used to stand.

Villamor, his wife and three children shared the place with two other families.

He said his family decided to return to their gutted home after running from the flames because they feared that other families may stake a claim to the land if they moved to a nearby village hall that was being turned into an evacuation center.

Gwendolyn Pang, a Philippine National Red Cross official, said the victims were being housed in two evacuation centers within the compound, including a social hall.

Thelsa Biolena, the Social Welfare Department's regional director, said porridge and boxes of noodles for hot soup were distributed to the victims, and more food packs will be distributed on Monday. The Red Cross will also send food Monday, Pang said.

The 130-acre compound that used to house a shipyard has been ravaged by huge fires before. A 2002 blaze left some 15,000 residents homeless, and a 2004 fire razed shanties of 25,000 people.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

[Neil]

Will we have a week of media coverage about this?

[Razgovory]

Will we have a week of media coverage about this?

You kidding?  Nobody wants to fly way the fuck out there.

[Habbaku]

I wonder what a manilla-colored fire looks like.

[HVC]

Will we have a week of media coverage about this?

If so, there go the Hatian charitable aid dollars

[DisturbedPervert]

Amorsolo Villamor's family ate their breakfast of rice gruel Sunday morning

I like how they call it 'gruel' instead of the less sensationalist porridge.  I eat rice gruel several times per week and it's delicious

[jimmy olsen]

Amorsolo Villamor's family ate their breakfast of rice gruel Sunday morning

I like how they call it 'gruel' instead of the less sensationalist porridge.  I eat rice gruel several times per week and it's delicious

Please Sir, I'd like some more.

[Pat]

Will we have a week of media coverage about this?

You kidding?  Nobody wants to fly way the fuck out there.

Oh, you see many fat westerners in Manila, who indeed fly the way there to fuck, and walk around with these little filipinas in tow (and before anyone ask, that was not my reason for going there). Manila is probably the worst place I've been to in terms of abject poverty and despair. The nice parts of Manila were even more depressing than the slums I've been to in other big cities, because at least in places like Bombay the people are smiling even though they are poor. Not so in Manila. By the seaside there is a thick layer of garbage carried down-river from the inland that is thrown back by the waves, and you have small children walking on the water and they are kept buoyant by the trash, which they scavange. I don't think I even want to know what the slums look like (I found it dangerous and unsafe walking the streets in the "nice" parts, I had a few nasty incidents in a short amount of time and the first other westerner I talked to had been robbed at knife-point the day before).

I spent most of my time in the Mall of Asia, which is the third largest mall in the world but only the second largest in Manila. Most commerce is in these large malls, because they have guards to keep the filth of the street out. All the western luxury brands are represented. I'm told the Philippines have the largest gaps between rich and poor in Asia. I don't know if it's true but I have no trouble believing it. There are several book shops in the Mall of Asia belonging to different chains. The Philippines is firmly within the American cultural sphere. Most books are either cheap trashy bestsellers or big and glossy books with pictures of smiling people promising to make you rich if you follow easy steps, or books of that variety. And books on religion. Almost no quality literature, except for books with a religious or anti-scientific message (i.e. Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, books of that variety - Indonesian english-language book-shops are the same, incidentally). I did, however, find a book called "Culture and History" by the filipino writer Nick Joaquin, which was an interesting book on filipino culture and history. He makes the case for religion as a unifying filipino identity, because, as he explains on p. 115 (I still have the book):

"It would take some explaining to make a Badjao see how he is bound to defend the waters of faraway Bolinao, or to make an Ilongot understand that Pagadian is also his homeland. These things can be taught in school, but they come by instinct to those born to the culture. The Christian Filipino who has never seen Bolinao or Pagadian, who may not even know where they are and couldn't care less, will still, without question, go and die in their defense, as he would die for his own home, because they, too, are his own land. He will even, in defense of the homeland, fight outside the homeland, as Filipinos have fought in the Solomons and the Marianas, because the nationalism he carries in his blood is boundless."

And indeed, Filipinos have also died in defense of their boundless homeland in Vietnam and Korea and other places. And they are very proud to be the only christian country in Asia. A word of the church can decide an election, and because the church tell them not to use contraceptives, they don't use contraceptives (hence the over-population and poverty). Most Filipinos cross themselves every time they pass a church.

On the country-side I'm told they use banned pesticides on crops with disasterous health effects on the people and they shoot anyone trying to form a union or otherwise organize the workers.