Fire at Manila hotel-casino: 5 dead and 19 trapped

According to fire and city officials, the fire at Manila's hotel and casino complex was still raging six hours after it began Sunday morning, prompting more than 300 people to flee the area and six to be brought to the hospital.

Manila city’s disaster risk reduction chief, Johnny Yu stated that two of the people who died where hotel employees.

“The two are a security guard and a treasury officer. They were likely trapped, suffered from suffocation and were brought to the hospital but declared dead on arrival,” Yu told reporters, adding 19 were missing.

The fire is believed to have started in the casino or mezzanine area of the 21-floor hotel which regularly hosted both locals and foreigners, Yu added. Authorities are still investigating the cause of the fire

Responders sent a helicopter to rescue people trapped on the rooftop and officials launched a ground operation to get the others out.

Manila is one of 16 cities making up Metro Manila. Nearby cities were helping put out the blaze, Manila’s fire department said.

“This is a major fire. There were those who inhaled the smoke and were brought to the hospital,” senior fire officer Marlon Banaag told AFP.

Deadly blazes break out regularly in the Philippines, particularly in slum areas where there are virtually no safety standards. The deadliest in recent years was in suburban Manila where 72 people died in 2015 at a factory which makes rubber slippers.

In the southern city of Davao, 38 people were killed last December by a fire that ravaged a shopping mall and a call centre.

As reported by The Press of Atlantic City, firefighters found two more bodies Monday in a hotel-casino gutted by fire that sent thick, heavy smoke into the sky over the Philippine capital, raising the death toll to five, officials said.

One of several people injured in the blaze at the Manila Pavilion Hotel and Casino was fighting for her life in a hospital, Bureau of Fire Protection officials said, adding that all others guests and hotel employees have been accounted for.

The bodies of two security camera operators were found after firefighters managed to control the blaze, which raged from Sunday morning to early Monday, the officials said.

More than 300 hotel guests, including foreign tourists, and hotel and casino employees had been evacuated at the height of the fire, some by helicopter.

Police and firefighters blocked off the areas around the hotel to allow dozens of fire trucks to approach and fight the blaze.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte saw the billowing smoke and made an aerial inspection Sunday as he flew back to Manila from a northern city where he delivered a speech before Philippine Military Academy graduates, his aide said.