Fire Notes 03 — 06.09.2020


It wasn't a matter of minutes, but split seconds. A misstep could have been a life lost.⁣

Catch272 was getting ready to reopen as a takeout service. They had just bought a freezer and other new equipment. Having painted the floor all night, Apauls was actually about to go to sleep on the couch when she heard the commotion from next door. It was 10:39 A.M. when she ran to the streets and we received her messages a minute later. ⁣

At 10:43 A.M., a small fire truck from Barangay Kamuning arrived. They seemed successful but within five minutes they ran out of water. The fire raged on. Two big fire trucks arrived at 10:49 A.M.--you can see them enter frame in the ABS-CBN footage. ⁣

It didn't take long for the smoke and fire to turn into a blazing inferno that engulfed our shared space. Apauls' photos, videos and messages have timestamps. Based on these, she has been trying to reconstruct her memories of the morning of June 3 in a series of Fire Archives posts on Facebook. Her photos and videos here capture some of those crucial moments.⁣