A pre-dawn fire devastated a Philippine orphanage yesterday and killed at least 27 people, most of them children trapped on upper floors and babies abandoned in a nursery, officials said.
Police said yesterday evening that at least three children were still missing some 15 hours after the fire ravaged the sprawling Associacion de Damas de Pilipinas orphanage in central Manila.
It broke out the day before a local company was to host a Christmas party for the institution, located just 2km from the presidential palace.
President Joseph Estrada visited the orphanage during the day and said he would personally lead a campaign to raise funds for its reconstruction.
Orphanage workers said some of those killed could not get out of the blazing three-storey wooden building because its exit doors were locked. Several children trapped in a room were heard crying before flames destroyed the 78-year-old structure, radio reported.
An executive director of the orphanage said 27 people were killed in the blaze.
The country's worst fire destroyed a Manila discotheque in March 1996, killing 160 people.
Funeral parlour employees said five of the fire victims were adults. The rest were babies and children, including one about three months old. Their bodies were charred, some unrecognisable, the officials said.
More than 50 people - 24 children and their guardians and employees - scrambled out of the building after the fire broke out at 2 a.m. (6 p.m. Irish time, on Wednesday), Mayor Lito Atienza said. Faulty wiring in the chapel or the adjoining library of the orphanage was suspected to be the cause.
Mr Atienza said he was ordering an investigation into reports that the first fire truck did not arrive at the scene until about an hour after the blaze started - although the orphanage is only 500 metres from the nearest fire station.
Firemen were initially unable to get into the building because of the intense heat. With flashlights they could see the bodies of some children lying on the iron frames of beds.
Other bodies had fallen to the ground floor as ceilings collapsed, piling roofing materials, iron bars and smouldering bits of wood onto the corpses.