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 two-hour fire, which was fanned by strong winds and destroyed 500 shanties, 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.
Amid the ashes and a few wooden posts that were left of their shanty, Amorsolo Villamor's family ate their breakfast of rice gruel Sunday morning, unwilling to leave the tiny patch of land where their home used to stand.
Villamor, his wife and three children shared their shanty 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 centre.
The slum colony had been hit by huge fires in previous years, including a 2002 fire that left some 15,000 residents homeless, and a 2004 fire that razed shanties of 12,000 dwellers.
AP