SBMA Fire Chief Slams Manila Fire Dept. for Failure to Save Manila Post Office

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT – Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) Fire Chief Ranny D. Magno said the iconic Manila Post Office could have been saved from being totally gutted by fire if he was in charge of the fire-fighting team that responded to the blaze.

“I only need one 1500 gpm (gallons per minute) rated capacity pumper and one tanker to water supply and the historical building could have been saved,” Magno said in disappointment, suggesting that Manila Fire officers and personnel undergo schooling and training.

“If you have a 40,000 square foot building that is all ordinary group 1, the calculation would be 1,500 x 0.15 (density) = 225 + 250 (hose demand) = 475 gpm total for the fire pump,” he said, “if the structure has multiple hazards, the hazard with the highest gpm calculation dictates the pump size.”

“These are simple fire ground hydraulic calculation that all fire officers must learn,” he reiterated.

Magno also took exception to a Manila Fire Department statement using the term “mopping up” operations which, he said, is not part of the Fire Service’s language. “Ano kayo sundalo?” a visibly irked Magno said.

“Ang tawag diyan ay “overhaul operations, the objective of which is to seek out and extinguish all remaining fire, control loss, stabilize the incident scene by providing firefighter safety and to secure the structure.”

The fire hit the Manila Post Office in Manila late Sunday night and the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) said the blaze reached the first alarm at 11:41 p.m. Sunday and reached general alarm shortly before 6 a.m. Monday.

PREMATURE 

It was declared fire under control as of 7:22 a.m., Monday,  Manila Fire Department Fire Superintendent Christine Doctor-Cula said in a Facebook post, an announcement that Magno said was premature, righly so as the fire raged on for another day before finally being put out on Tuesday.

LOOTING?

Seventeen (17) fire personnel and a civilian were reportedly injured, strangely so, according to Magno, because they must have been donning PPEs (Personnel Protective Equipment). “They may have sustained injuries because they took off their PPEs for some reason, like attempting to sift through the parcels for what they can take,” he told Subic Bay News.

Magno said he is offering the services of the SBMA Fire Department to train and provide schooling for Manila Fire Dept. officers and personnel.

The SBMA Fire Department is a multi-awarded unit, both locally and internationally, and has been tapped to provide services in several major disasters, the latest of which was the deadly magnitude 7.8 earthquake that rocked Turkiye and Syria in February this year, killing close to 60,000 people in both countries.

Magno, a fireman of the US Naval Base in Subic Bay in the past, himself, headed the 82-man Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) team of the Philippine contingent which heaped praises from the Turkish government and was cited by the Philippine senate for a job well done.

“May kirot sa dibdib ang pagkatupok ng Manila Post Office buiding,“ he said, “wala na nga tayo halos ganoong klaseng gusali na nakatayo pa hanggang sa kaslukuyan tapos ganoon na lang, napabayaan. (Vic V. Vizcocho, Jr. with reports from PNA)