When flames engulf a crowded disco, safety violations condemn 154--most of them students

RAHUL JACOB

Unknown to the high-school throng dancing to a catchy Latin tune, or to the parents who would shortly grieve their loss, the crowded club in suburban Manila was a deathtrap cruelly masquerading as a disco. The only fire exit at the Ozone Disco Pub available to the young people--mostly teenagers, celebrating the end of the school year--was sealed a few months ago by construction of an adjoining building. Licensed for 60 occupants, the 700-sq-m club should have had no more than 100 people, yet it was jam-packed with 400. If the patrons needed to leave in a hurry, the only egress was a narrow passageway leading to a door that opened inward.

It was a little past midnight on March 19 when the Ozone fire started. DJ Mervil Reyes was cuing the next record when he heard a loud explosion. Almost simultaneously smoke began pouring through the ceiling of his booth. A waiter tried putting out the blaze, but the fire extinguisher he picked up was defective. In those first crucial seconds the beat of Macarena drowned out Reyes' efforts to shout a warning. Those few patrons who noticed the flames dismissed them as a clever special effect.

Moments later the music died, the lights went out and flames flashed across the ceiling, engulfing the Ozone with devastating speed. "It took only about two minutes before the whole place caught fire," says Reyes, "giving no time for the young customers to leave."

Pandemonium broke out as the panicking youths stampeded for the single narrow doorway. Susan Cabuslay, 17, was among those nearly trampled to death in the crush to get out. "I couldn't see the door because of the heavy smoke," she says. "I was knocked down. I thought that was the end for me, but I kept on imploring the Lord to please help me."

As Reyes ran toward the exit, he turned back for the last time and witnessed a panoply of horror. "I saw everything, how they lay down, how they were burning...It was like an inferno," he says.

By the time the conflagration was brought under control some 40 minutes later, it had claimed 154 lives--the largest death toll ever from a fire in the Philippines. Rescue teams found bodies charred beyond recognition, one on top of the other in a waist-high pile. Two teenage sisters died wrapped in each other's arms. Eighty survivors, many severely burned, were hospitalized.

Removing and identifying the bodies was an ordeal for rescuers and relatives alike. At one point, as stretchers were being loaded into a stream of ambulances, a distraught man used a bullhorn to ask the crowd to help him find his daughter. Overcome by grief, he staggered toward the ominous black pit where the nightclub once stood and forlornly called her name again and again.

Filipinos are no strangers to natural disaster nor, increasingly, to calamities brought on by human failings--greed and negligence in particular. Even so, the nation is still reeling from the shock of the Ozone Disco fire. For many, it is a gruesome reminder of how hopelessly ineffectual safety regulations in the Philippines have become. More often than not, these rules serve as a conduit for bribes paid by businessmen cutting corners to government inspectors augmenting their lowly salaries. Visiting the Ozone site the afternoon following the fire, President Fidel Ramos ordered a probe into the nightclub's glaring violation of building and fire-safety codes. Said Ramos: "Rest assured that the government will leave no stone unturned to get to the truth of this incident and prevent similar tragedies in the future."

Some lawmakers were more caustic about the insidious dangers of corruption. Dismissing the call for an inquiry by some of his colleagues as "the usual knee-jerk reaction," Senator Francisco Tatad asked, "What good will it do? We have all the laws that say you cannot operate a firetrap as a disco joint. But like many of our laws, they are not being enforced. And some corrupt officials are obviously making a killing on their nonenforcement."

Tatad then issued a ringing call for action: "First we bury the dead, then we cut off some heads." Authorities responded to a growing public outcry, indicting the Ozone's five owners and six local officials on charges of reckless imprudence resulting in multiple homicide. Two dozen nightclubs and discos were closed down for fire-code violations.

In the longer term, though, the Ramos government may have to increase the salaries and accountability of municipal officials or face the unacceptable risk of a tragedy repeating itself.

--Reported by Nelly Sindayen/Manila