Fire truck kills 3 in accident

PAGADIAN CITY — Three people were killed and six others were injured after the driver of a fire truck lost control of the truck’s brakes Saturday morning, officials said.

Senior Fire Officer 1 Juanito Madrid was driving the 12-year-old Daewoo fire truck and was on his way to refuel the vehicle when its brakes malfunctioned, said Fire Chief Inspector Virgina Toledo of the Pagadian Bureau of Fire Prevention (BFP).

The truck lurched downhill to Benigno Aquino street, careening toward the city’s crowded bus terminal and public market, ramming four vehicles, including two tricycles, a van, a parked pickup truck and a parked 10-wheeler cargo truck owned by the provincial government of Zamboanga del Sur.

The tricycles and van were totally wrecked, caught in a grisly sandwich between the fire truck and the 10-wheeler truck. The fire truck also sideswiped the pickup truck and slammed into a store.

The impact instantly killed tricycle driver Sonny Singidas, 42; the van’s passenger and owner, 71-year-old Jesus Mendez; and tricycle passenger Reyna Riza Mañacap.

One of the injured, 10-year-old Alfonso Yap, is confined at the Pagadian City Medical Center and needs surgery for a fractured left leg.

Also injured were Carmen Cañete, 44; James Yap, 7; Diego Puerto, 36; and van driver Rommel Gutierez, 33, whose survival was seen by observers as "miraculous."

It took nearly an hour for rescuers to extract Gutierez from the van, as the driver’s seat of the van was partially crushed by the impact and the vehicle was a total wreck.

Madrid is now detained at the Pagadian police detention cell and he has refused to speak to the press. He served as a fire truck driver for 15 years since he began working for the BFP in 1990.

It will be recalled that the same fire truck slammed into the gate of the City Engineering Office of Pagadian after its brakes malfunctioned while the truck was responding to a fire call.