Police confirms 10 dead in LRP fire

TACLOBAN CITY, Philippines – Senior Superintendent Franc Simborio, director of the Leyte Police Provincial Office, yesterday said the death toll was officially set at 10, after the last of the charred bodies inside the razed building was recovered yesterday morning.

The fate of one unaccounted prisoner, however, or the 11th earlier deemed missing from the roster of 1,256 prisoners, occupying the fire-hit maximum security compound building, could not be ascertained to this day. Nobody from the Leyte Regional Prison could present any explanation on his whereabouts also.

Pending investigation of the incident, Simborio could only surmised that the unidentified “missing” prisoner may have escaped from jail at the height of the fire, but then he said that possibility has yet to be confirmed.

Without such confirmation, Simborio said the official word would be that no prisoner had bolted jail, and that the latest headcount of surviving prisoners stayed at 1,245, aside from the 10 confirmed dead and one still missing.

LRP officials were also mum on the identities of the 11 prisoners, or of the 10 fatalities who were burned beyond recognition, even if they could have their names by basing on the list of survivors, who are now housed at the minimum security compound.

Simborio said the LRP officials may have opted to wait for the investigators from the Bureau of Corrections’ central office in Metro Manila who were scheduled to arrive today for a thorough probe of the incident.

Chief Superintendent Asher Dolina, director of the Police Regional Office-8, reiterated that the members of the Abuyog Police Station will be a part of the investigating team, as standard operating procedure of which the local police had to participate in the probe of an incident occurring in its area of jurisdiction.

Among the possible areas to be investigated were unconfirmed reports from some jail insiders that some prisoners had a pot session inside the toilet of the MSC where the 10-hour long fire allegedly started.

Some relatives, who visited the prisoners that day but before the fire struck, also said they were surprised why jail officers cut short their visiting hours at 2 p.m., two hours before the 4 p.m. closure. The fire broke out at about 3:45 p.m. but all visitors were no longer inside the compound by that time.

Simborio then belied reports that families of the prisoners staged protest rally outside the LRP gates due to the alleged refusal of prison authorities to let them in and see if their jailed relatives were safe after the fire. He said he got confirmation that visitors or prisoners’ relatives were already allowed to enter the LRP during the usual visiting hours.

Inspector Catalino Landia, chief of the Abuyog Police, earlier said the charred bodies of the prisoners were found at different locations inside the razed building. They could have been trapped there, during the stampede at the height of the fire.

Police and fire officials had said the Thursday fire was apparently triggered by a short circuit from a faulty electrical wiring, and spread to the prison infirmary. It reached the third alarm before a fire out was declared by midnight into Friday dawn.

An InterAksyon.com report also said BuCor spokesperson Father Bobby Olaguer said BuCor assistant director Martin Perfecto was already in Leyte to oversee the situation in the area, with BuCor Director Rainier Cruz providing updates to Justice Secretary Leila De Lima.