Philippines clothing store fire kills 17 workers sleeping inside

Predominantly female staff became trapped on top floor of building in Butuan city, authorities say A fire at a three-storey clothing store in the southern Philippines has killed 17 employees, most of them women who had been asleep and found themselves trapped on the top floor, officials said. The fire in the Butuan city store broke out at 3.55am and raged for five hours. Firefighters and police scouring the gutted building found 17 bodies, the city police chief, Pedro Obaldo, said. A store employee, Mylene Tulo, who escaped with two co-workers, said she had awoken as the fire was spreading rapidly in the third-floor office where they slept. Amid the flames and cries for help, she managed to dash out with her colleagues. They sustained minor burns on their arms. "We wanted to rouse others from sleep but the fire was already too strong," Tulo said. At least 20 employees, mostly women, had been sleeping at the store when the fire broke out, Obaldo said. Many stores in the Philippines allow their employees to sleep over, especially workers with homes far away. Relatives and friends, most of them in shock and tears, gathered in search of loved ones in front of the building, where police stood before body bags containing the victims' remains. Obaldo said investigators were trying to determine what sparked the fire, and whether the owners had violated fire regulations. The building, in Agusan del Norte province in the southern Mindanao region, was a theatre before being turned into a commercial centre with several stores, including Novo Jeans and Shirts, where most of the victims died. A lack of firefighting equipment and personnel, coupled with safety violations, has resulted in major fire disasters in the Philippines, especially in shantytowns. A 1995 blaze that gutted the Ozone Disco Pub in Manila, the capital, killed 162 people. Butuan is a city of more than 300,000 about 500 miles south-east of Manila. 9 May 2012 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/09/philippines-clothing-store-fire-sleeping