Las Pinas barangays tapped for better fire prevention in city

From mb.com.ph:

MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP)-Las Piñas is tapping 20 barangays in the city to lessen the incidence of fire, particularly in informal settlers’ areas.

Las Piñas Fire Marshal Supt. Felix B. Medes Sunday said they have started conducting lectures on fire safety awareness and distributing leaflets on fire safety tips among the barangays. “We coordinated with barangay chairmen, and they gathered their residents and officers in their barangay halls for a ‘pulong-pulong’ in which we gave fire safety tips and conducted open forum to listen to their problems with regards to safety awareness,” he said.

The Las Piñas Fire Bureau has six fire sub-stations, eight functional fire trucks and one ambulance, with 69 fire personnel. However, they have no volunteer fire brigades. Their water supply support comes from the water delivery business.

Among the problems they encounter are lack of personnel and narrow pathways in informal settlers’ areas which cannot be reached by fire trucks.

Despite the problems, Medes reported that nine fire incidents happened from May to June 2011 compared to 11 in the same month of 2010.

Medes also said that they have increased the collection of fire code fees for the first half of 2011 to P7,966,868.34 compared to P6,819,341.65 for the same period in 2010. (Czarina Nicole Ong)