Big fire

Loren and I were coming out from Ayala last night at around 8:30PM and we were approaching the jeepney terminal when we saw a huge plume of smoke rising from a big fire that seemed to be not too far away. We couldn't see much of the fire itself aside from a few flames reaching over the tops of trees, but we could see the flying sparks and the orange glow of the fire reflected on the tower of smoke. In any case, in was obvious that something big was on fire that shouldn't be.

A large fire at night is a spectacular sight, with the contrast of orange flames against the dark violet night sky. As much as I did sincerely hope that nobody was hurt, I just couldn't resist the chance to see a big destructive fire. We were in Cebu Business Park, so maybe the fire was coming from something big! Maybe even a high rise building! Maybe some terrorists were in Cebu for the (postponed) ASEAN Summit and decided to blow up something anyway! It sounds horrible to be excited by the prospect of destruction, but, well, that's me.

So, as if it was the most natural thing in the world (and without even knowing exactly where the fire was coming from), the two of us walked towards the direction of the fire to hopefully get a chance to see more of it. We walked for a few minutes passing over a grassy and slightly muddy area beside the Ayala Center, and encountered a security guard and asked him what he knows. It turns out the fire was probably coming from a squatters area behind a wall. I guess the prospect of making our way towards a squatters area dulled our excitement, because we gave up trying to reach the fire. Besides, we could hear sirens and the fire was probably being put out already.

I guess nothing too important was burned, since I can't find anything about the fire in the newspapers (even in the local papers). Oh well.

Update (December 12, 2006, 1:57PM): There's an article about the fire in today's Sun.Star Cebu. It lasted 8:08PM-9:44PM, razed at least 20 houses, caused P280,000 in damage, and left 3 people with minor injuries.