Blaze on rare night

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February 2, 2018
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Fire erupts at Boracay resort as super blue blood moon unfolds

BORACAY – As people the world over witnessed a rare celestial event on Wednesday night, fire erupted at a popular resort in Sitio Diniwid in Barangay Balabag.

The blaze that engulfed much of Nami Resort proved to be difficult to put out, most especially because of the establishment’s hilly location, according to Malay Fire Marshal Lorna Parcellano.

It took the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) almost three hours to put out the fire. The blaze started at around 10 p.m. Responding firefighters declared a “fire out” at around 12:53 a.m. on Thursday.

Hotel guests and staffers have been evacuated before the fire got bigger. No casualties or injuries have been reported.

Aside from the BFP, personnel from the Boracay Fire, Rescue and Ambulance Volunteers responded, too.

Fire investigators have yet to determine the cause of the blaze as of press time but have estimated the cost of damage at P20 million.

That many of the resort’s structures were located uphill, some passageways were narrow and debris were falling added to the difficulty in fighting the fire, the BFP said.

These circumstances forced some of the firefighters to position themselves at the back of the resort in Sitio Hagdan, Barangay Yapak.

Many locals witnessed the incident that coincided with the appearance of the super blue blood moon – a celestial event where the blue moon (second full moon in a month) is at its nearest to the earth during a total lunar eclipse.

One of them was Paul Benzi Florendo, who was considerably near Nami Resort, as seen from the photos he posted on Facebook.

“Tonight around 10 p.m. while I was talking to a friend about how to help Diniwid and build up its community and, at the same time, hoping for the skies to clear up to see the blood moon, we hear sirens,” Florendo wrote on his post.

At first Florendo thought it was “just some minor fire” but later discovered that it was engulfing “one of the famous hotels” by the Diniwid beach.

“It was horrible visually and audibly terrifying,” he wrote. “There was popping and loud cracking, bright red all over the blue ocean. It is hard to believe something so close to a big body of water can continually burn.”

Florendo said he wished he could do something to help but “unfortunately it’s safer for some of us to keep distance.”

“It is heartbreaking to see something unexpectedly bad like this on a supposedly beautiful moonlit night,” he said. (With reports from ABS-CBN and Radyo Todo Aklan/PN)
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