By Maya M. Padillo
DAVAO CITY — After conducting their final walk through at the fire site yesterday, Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) Inter-agency Anti-Arson Task Force team leader and BFP spokesperson Jerry D. Candido said the focus of the task force now is to determine who are liable for the Dec. 23, 2017, NCCC fire that killed 38.
Mr. Candido said they will recommend charges to be filed after they have gathered the necessary documents within the week. He said the BFP-Davao could face criminal, civil, and administrative cases, while the NCCC management and SSI may face criminal and civil cases.
“We are trying our best to finish collecting the documents in one week starting today including the finalization of report. But if we cannot make it we will try on the second week of January but our target is within the week. Kakayahin namin (We can do it) and it depends on the submission of documents,” he said in an interview.
The task force also wants to identify the contractor that conducted repairs at the third floor of the mall when the fire erupted.
The cases will be filed by the task force, which is composed of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), BFP, National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), Department of Justice (DoJ), and Criminal Investigation and Detection Group XI (CIDG XI).
Mr. Candido said the investigation covered such aspects as the cause of the fire, how the victims were trapped, the conduct of firefighting operations, and determining the liabilities of the parties responsible for this incident.
He said they received last night laboratory test results on the cause of the fire from different pieces of evidence, adding that the results point to electrical short-circuiting in the furniture section of the mall’s third floor.
Mr. Candido said they also brought in the burned debris and ashes to determine if there was flammable liquid used and the result yielded negative. “Angle of arson is totally disregarded. In fact, we can now finally say that the cause of fire is electrical short-circuit,” he said.
He said the point of origin is the ceiling portion of the third floor. “We’re almost done and (it’s) just a matter of writing it since we have already received last night the laboratory test results,” Mr. Candido said.
Mr. Candido noted earlier that there were violations in the conduct of the emergency like the delayed warning during the fire, because the mall’s fire detection and alarm system was not connected throughout the building, particularly in the SSI area. “It means their alarm systems are not interconnected and we can also establish that at the time of fire their automatic alarm system did not function, because it is manually operated, because the floor control valve was already turned off,” he said.
He also said the exits were not compliant with the fire code. “The worst is at the ceiling portion of their exit there was also an opening na parang naging highway ng smoke (that became a smoke highway). Ang kanilang (Their) automatic fire suppression system hindi rin (was not activated) all throughout since SSI has no automatic fire suppression system,” Mr. Candido said.
Mr. Candido said while they were having their final walk through in the fourth floor of the mall yesterday, they discovered more burned human bones. He said they requested officials from the Scene Of the Crime Operatives (SOCO) to “re-process” the bones.
An employee of SSI, Alexandra Moreno-Castillo, remains missing.
“Ang hindi na account si Moreno na lang (Only Ms. Moreno remains unaccounted for),” Mr. Candido said, adding that he had talked to her father who believes his daughter is inside the mall.
