Manila, Nov 25 (EFE).- A massive fire has destroyed hundreds of houses and left some 8,000 people homeless in a Manila shantytown, Philippine officials said Monday.
The capital’s disaster management agency said some 2,000 families were affected by the fire, adding that many of those were taken to a nearby evacuation center.
Authorities have not specified whether the fire produced any casualties, or how it started.
The incident took place on the breakwater of Manila’s North Port, in a town known as Isla Puting Bato.
The fire started on Sunday morning and could not be extinguished by firefighters until the evening, the disaster management agency said.
Around a thousand homes, many of them built from wood and raised above the waters of the port by means of poles, were destroyed.
Urban fires are frequent in the Manila metropolitan area, a megacity of more than 14 million people with some very densely populated areas where thousands of people live close together with poor security conditions to prevent these incidents.
On Apr. 10, the same shantytown experienced another fire that affected thousands of people, while in August 11 people died in a fire inside a five-story building with residences and shops in the city’s Chinatown.
The biggest tragedy in recent years occurred in 2017 when 37 people died in a fire in a shopping center in Davao, in the south of the archipelago. EFE
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