Offices adjacent to the Women’s Desk Section, which was hit by the fire, were evacuated but thick smoke prevented jail officials from evacuating detainees on the third floor.
Arson prober SFO3 Ireneo Servillo said calm was restored when firefighters from an adjacent fire station arrived and quickly put out the blaze, which could have been caused by an overheated TV transformer.
Fernando Viray, a civilian agent of the Station Drug Enforcement Unit (SDEU), located at the ground floor of the building, said he saw thick smoke billowing out of the door of the WDS at about 11:55 a.m.
Shouts of fire aroused other civilian and police personnel who rushed to the WDS to put out the blaze.
When thick smoke started seeping up into the 3rd floor, relatives visiting the inmates pleaded to jail guards to evacuate them but they were ignored.
"We pleaded to the jail officials to handcuff the inmates and allow them out of their cells because we didn’t want them roasted alive," said a visiting relative. But the jail guards refused to move because of the thick smoke.
The fire gutted the ceiling and some office equipment, including a PC and a water dispenser inside the WDS.
Responding firemen broke the glass panels of the room to battle the fire for 10 minutes. – Non Alquitran