Firecracker Store Explosion In Bocaue Razes 10 Stores, $484,000 Property, Merchandise Burned

December 31, 2007 7:05 a.m. EST

Manila, Philippines (AHN) - A cigarette butt thrown carelessly by a driver ignited firecrackers being sold and led to a one-hour fire that razed to the ground 10 firecracker stores in Bocaue, Bulacan on Monday morning. Estimate of the damage, which burned merchandise and stores, is estimated at $484,000.

Bocaue is the firecracker capital of the Philippines. Days before Dec. 31, many Filipinos troop to Bocaue to buy deadly explosives usually manufactured unsupervised and under dubious safety conditions in garages and makeshift huts. Even if authorities have banned the sale of highly explosive devices like the piccolo, the prohibition is generally ignored to go on with New Year's Eve tradition of lighting up explosives to chase bad luck.

Seven were injured from the explosion, according to GMA 7 News, including two of its crew. Included in the damage were the earnings of one stall owner who left his money bag containing thousands of pesos and several hundreds of dollars, when recovered it yielded half burnt bills.

After firemen contained the blaze in less than one hour, selling of banned firecrackers went on in other parts of Bocaue.

The Bocaue incident is not the only one. On early Monday morning, a fire burned six shoe shops in Rosario, Cavite, again caused by a cigarette butt thrown carelessly at a nearby firecracker store. Damage was placed at $24,000 (1 million pesos).

Because of the incident, the town mayor Jose Ricafrente Jr. totally banned the sale of all types of firecrackers in the municipality.

Despite the two incidents, the national campaign to resort to safer noise making devices such as trumpets or pots and pans to welcome the New Year is making inroads over the past five years. Sales of firecrackers have been going down, while the duration of the explosions has considerably shortened from 30 minutes to midnight until past 1 a.m. to just 10 minutes prior to the change of year and 20 minutes after midnight.

As a result, even the number of firecracker injuries has gone down by a record 34 percent as of Monday morning, according to Health Secretary Francisco Duque III. Majority of the firecracker accidents were recorded in Metro Manila, 80 percent were males and 46 percent children 10 years old and younger.