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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Residents gather at a still-smoldering Bed and Breakfast Pension House in Tuguegarao city, Cagayan province in northern Philippines, after a fire rapidly swept through the budget hotel early Sunday, Dec. 19, 2010. The fire burned to death 15 people, several crammed in bathrooms where they fled in panic, and injuring 12 others. Nine of the victims were nursing students in town to take a licensing exam, officials said. (AP Photo)
MANILA, Philippines — The death toll in a fire that swept through a budget hotel in the northern Philippines rose Monday to 16 after one of the survivors died in hospital, police said.
The fire razed the Bed and Breakfast Pension House in Cagayan province’s capital Tuguegarao city early Sunday, burning to death 15 people — several crammed in bathrooms where they fled in panic. Nine of the victims were nursing students in town to take a licensing exam.
Cagayan police chief Mao Aplasca said another male nursing student who was among 19 people brought to hospital later died, bringing the death toll to 16.
Fire investigator Daniel Abana said the student, an asthmatic who suffered minor burns, died late Sunday due to asphyxia or suffocation. Two other survivors, including the hotel owner, are in the intensive care unit, he added.
Abana said some firefighters were moved to tears after finding the badly burned bodies in the upper floors of the five-story hotel and offered prayers before retrieving the remains.
The fire raged for eight hours and gutted the hotel.
The students who survived the fire went on to take the exam on Sunday, including one who showed up in slippers and sleeping clothes.
Relatives grieved at a morgue where remains of victims, 14 burned beyond recognition, were brought. Some fainted as body bags were brought into a funeral parlor.
“Their families spent fortunes to send these children to school only to see them end that way,” Abana told The Associated Press by telephone.
The fire started on the ground floor, triggered by electrical wire problems, he said, adding that paint cans and other combustible materials in the building contributed to the quick spread of the flames.
Dozens of guests, roused by the commotion, were rescued by firefighters and police out of the still-smoldering building through the main gate and fire escapes. Some managed to escape on their own but others may have panicked and got trapped by the flames, Aplasca said.
Among the dead were 10 nursing students, including the latest fatality. The rest were members of the family that owned the hotel, including three children, Aplasca said.
Many of the dead had crammed in bathrooms on the top two floors.
A nursing college instructor, Romeo Opido, told police that about 36 nursing students from nearby provinces were at the hotel in Tuguegarao, about 215 miles (350 kilometers) north of Manila. At least 27 escaped and 9 were missing, he said before the bodies were discovered.
Many Filipino students from middle-income and impoverished families have taken nursing courses in recent years in the hope of landing relatively high-paying jobs abroad. Their massive departure has alarmed officials in the poor Southeast Asian country, which sorely lacks medical workers and hospitals.
