The day Tina got fired up

This is the one sound of alarm that I dread the most.

Give me rain, floods or even an earthquake (which can be pretty shaky for me since I’ve been staying lately in my halfway house which – on the side of the almost 40-story building where I live – is the topmost floor). But fire? It’s something I wouldn’t even wish on my worst enemy.

As they say in the vernacular, "Manakawan ka na ng sampung beses, huag ka lang masunugan."

No thanks to the still unsolved horrible Metro Manila traffic (it’s bad in spite of the fact that it’s school break), I’ve been left with no choice but to stay mostly in my halfway house somewhere in Greenhills, which is in the center of everything.

From where I stay, I get a spectacular view of seven provinces – the mountains (including Mt. Arayat on a clear day) and even the waters of Manila Bay and Laguna de Bay. For somebody like me who doesn’t suffer from acrophobia, this is a visual delight. On the other hand, it can also be a tragedy – especially since I see the smog and all the fires that break in various parts of the metropolis.

As a kid, I admit that watching fires from afar was something I considered entertainment. But now that I know better, it breaks my heart just thinking about how much property is destroyed and how many lives are lost in these fires.

Since the start of summer, I’ve been witness every week – without fail – to some fire occurring in different parts of the city.

At a little way past 1 a.m. last Tuesday, I heard sirens again, blaring sirens that unmistakably came from fire trucks that were racing against each other. I looked toward the direction of Camp Crame because a lot of fires had been breaking out from there lately – usually in the squatters’ colony at the back of the military installation. (The most frightening was when the armory caught fire last Feb. 25 and there were explosions all over.) But the Crame side was relatively peaceful.

Then, I turned toward the side of Gilmore Ext. (now Granada) and to my horror saw the inferno that was eating up an area that looked like Gilmore Townhomes. Merciful heavens, but that’s where my friend Tina Revilla lives!

I know the place because Tina and her husband Serge Valencia had been hospitable to me there on quite a number of occasions in our long friendship.

Gilmore Townhomes is actually a row of nice and neat townhouses developed by the Ayalas sometime in 1984. It’s a very nice neighborhood where Serge and Tina raised their kids, Gio (turning 19 in July) and Jana, 16.

My first impulse upon seeing the place on fire was to ring up Tina’s cell phone. But I hesitated a bit because what if Tina was in the middle of saving their belongings or, heaven forbid, their lives? I’m sorry, Tina, but a lot of dreadful things came into my mind that time. I was panicking like the fire was just next door to mine.

But I tried calling anyway. No answer.

I then looked for my car key and got myself ready to drive to Gilmore. But wait, I had to take a quick shower first. (Isn’t that very Pinoy to take a bath first before leaving the house?)

Still dripping wet from the shower (the quickest bath I must have taken in my whole life), I looked at the Ortigas Avenue-Santolan intersection and saw fire trucks blocking the way. I realized then that it was useless for me to drive over because there was nothing I can do to help at that point. I will really just be getting in the way of rescue and operations with my car and me there.

I tried calling Tina a second time and still, there was no answer. For a while, I seriously considered waking up Rosa Rosal and Toni Rose Gayda who are also friends of Serge and Tina. But Tita Rose and Toni live at the other end of Wack-Wack (on the Shaw Blvd. side) even they couldn’t do much anymore at that point. Maybe they can pray. But I can do that, too. So I did. But with each Our Father, I would see LPG tanks exploding in the middle of that conflagration and it was a terrifying sight even from a distance.

The prayers surely helped – at least to calm me down. I began tracing in the darkness the area of Gilmore Townhomes. Maybe it wasn’t really Gilmore Townhomes that was on fire. (But wherever the fire was, I just prayed that it would stop to prevent further damage to property and lives.) I also began telling myself that if Tina was in need of help, she has a whole barangay of siblings (six sisters and a brother) who will surely rush over to help her. Oh yeah, I know her brother Johnny Revilla. I can call him up, except that I don’t have his number. Ricky Lo does – but the last thing I wanted to do was wake up my editor in the middle of the night and risk losing my job in this paper.

Other thoughts filled my mind that time – how Serge’s mother, Rosie Osmeña Valencia (daughter of the late President Sergio Osmeña, Sr.) lost her house to a fire in the late ’70s. Why, even the Parañaque house where Tina was raised almost got burned in 1992 when the house of their next-door neighbor, Bong Tangco, caught fire. Mercifully, only the roof of the cabana in the Revilla home got burned.

It was close to four in the morning when I tried making my third and last call to Tina. Still no answer. Maybe the fire wasn’t really in their area and – who knows? – she was probably sleeping soundly.

At that point, the sleep aid I popped four hours earlier was already dragging me to bed and I just prayed Tina, Serge and their kids were okay and that the fire would stop and there would be minimal loss to lives and property.

Later in the day, I finally got to speak to Tina. She was okay, thank heavens. Three houses in Gilmore Townhomes got burned, but theirs was spared mercifully. The conflagration actually started in the squatters’ area at the back of Gilmore Townhomes.

According to a report (by Katherine Adraneda) that appeared in the Metro section of this paper last Wednesday, the fire supposedly started in the residence of a certain Carlito Nazareto, Sr. of 52 Area-I Santolan Road.

Nazareto and his two sons Carlito III and Noniver were later detained at the fire station nearby for allegedly burning their house that also affected about 50 other homes in the area. (Around 100 families were left homeless.)

From Tina’s end, she and her husband were roused from sleep by their helper at around 1 a.m. to tell them about the fire. Although they panicked, they were still able to put on decent clothes and Tina, in fact, was still able to wash her face and brush her teeth before rushing down to help alert other neighbors about the fire. "For one thing, we had to clear the area because there were big cars blocking the roads," relates Tina.

From time to time, she had to rush back to the house to put a wet towel on her face "because the smoke was just too much." And yes, she had to constantly make a headcount of her family.

Although the fire wasn’t put out until 6:36 a.m., Tina and her neighbors knew that their homes were already safe at around 4 a.m. – when they were all physically, mentally and emotionally drained. (But she swears by the efficiency of the Chinese fire fighting brigade).

It was when she got home that she saw all my missed calls and tried to reach me, except that I had already put off my phone by then.

By the time we were able to get hold of each other, Tina had already long collected herself as we talked about the fire that nearly burned down her house. In the course of our conversation, however, we eventually forgot about the fire as our discussion steered toward an even fierier subject matter: politics and the recent elections. But I am not sharing this anymore with you lest you, too, all get fired up.