The Spy in the Sandwich

Sunday, June 03, 2018

8:00 AM | The Fires of Dumaguete

I was six when I saw my first big fire. It was 1981, we lived in an old building—a rickety wooden affair that had plenty of rooms for several tenants and creaked during rainy days—which was owned by someone we called Tiya Tansing, and the house just happened to be located right near the corner of Calle Sta. Rosa and Calle Real, a stone’s throw away from the tianggue.

The tianggue in the old days was two or three blocks worth of stalls—mostly wooden and makeshift—constituting a grand maze of no discernable design, although I remember there was a movie theater there somewhere, where we saw the latest Snooky Serna and Maricel Soriano teeny bopper films from Regal. I can’t remember the name of the theater, but I can recall the heady topsy-turviness of the place, and the inescapable smell of vegetable rot and fish entrails.

One night in 1981, while Dumaguete slept, the whole tianggue burned down, a grand conflagration that was so immense, it felt like the apocalypse. That we lived nearby pushed us to panic, and I remember my family trying to evacuate what possessions we had—the dining table, boxes of clothes, assorted items marking lives suddenly seeming so fragile—from our apartment in Tiya Tansing’s house and right onto the street, which was swarming with onlookers who were in equal measure frightened and excited. I remember the rain of embers from the night sky—dots of firelight that looked like fireflies, but here and there were creating new fires in nearby houses.

That scene remains indelible in my memory. In 2006, when I wrote my short story “A Strange Map of Time,” which is included in my book Heartbreak and Magic, I memorialized all of that in this passage, where the hero confronts a similar fire to get to a mystical gate: “[H]e opened his eyes to a strange night, a fiery brightness everywhere in Dumaguet he could not shake away like a bad dream. The world crawled into his consciousness. His senses took time to recover, and only little by little did he make out the details of things: the smell was of acrid burning; the feel was of far-off heat licking the sensitive hair on his arms and face; the noise was of shouts in crescendo, the wailing of alarm constant in the air.

“It was the year of the Big Fire. The sight disconcerted him: a huge city block was in flames, the fire ravenously licking wood and toppling cement walls. There seemed to be an endlessness to the devastation, with fire spreading everywhere. It seemed like the end of the world. From everywhere, strange and old-looking earthbound trucks, painted red, buzzed about in fashion, sending gushes of hosed water into the air, into the heart of the flame, onto the surfaces of buildings opposite.

“The young man who used to be Sawi stood up and walked towards the fire and the gathering throng. Around him, people panicked, grabbing hold of so many things—a very thin old man was carrying a refrigerator, an old woman had six toddlers in her arms, two boys were rushing towards the crowd with a huge aparador between them—all of them running around to somewhere and nowhere. He saw that there was also a growing crowd—hundreds—that also descended to watch, in a clinch of awe and horror, the conflagration.”

I write this about fires and the grim fascination over them because only last Wednesday, Times Mercantile along Dr. V. Locsin Street burned down. Again.

Photo by Sho Tuazon

This is the second time this has happened to this local grocery store, arguably a Dumaguete business icon, something all locals know to go to for the best priced liquor and the like. With Fortune Mart also gone, only Ricky’s remain of the Dumaguete of old. In 2000, Times’ old front along Perdices Street burned down along with the old Ricky’s, a fire that claimed two lives and reshaped how Dumagueteños did their after-hours grocery shopping.

But fires have an interesting history in Dumaguete, a terrible but decisive shaper of its landscape. The local church historian Fr. Roman Sagun has an interesting article about local conflagrations, and in “Fire and the Changing Cityscape of Dumaguete City,” he writes: “In 1990, a massive fire leveled down commercial establishments and residences along Real and Cervantes Streets. It affected two adjacent blocks that were mainly occupied by 34 families and eight commercial establishments. The fire started at 3:00 A.M and was contained two hours after. There were no casualties … but all 34 families were left homeless. The fire rapidly blazed all that was found within the adjacent blocks since most of the houses were made of nipa. Witnesses said that two fire trucks arrived early but one of the hoses snapped, [which] was because the valve was opened too soon before an additional link could be installed. [There was also looting, as] people pretended to help but … stole from the victims and commercial establishments [instead].”

The 1990 fire started at what was then VJR Kitchenette, which was located behind the old Rhine Marketing, and it quickly engulfed the surrounding commercial establishments including Tat’s or Goldy Theater, Dove Theater, Glecel’s Kitchenette, Luzonians Restaurant, Lamp Lighter, Badon Repair Shop, City Barbershop, GM Furniture, Anchor’s Tailoring, Tan’s Rechargeable Shop, and Vesin’s Store.

Fr. Sagun also wrote of the 1992 fire that damaged the Gold Label Grocery Store along Locsin and Ma. Cristina Streets caused by faulty electrical wiring. In 1994, the New Bian Yek Commercial Building along Real Street also caught fire, and while the concrete structure remained, the shops in the interior were decimated. In 1996, the Philippine National Police headquarters went up in flames.

The 1990s was a decade of fires in Dumaguete. Most of these fires occurred downtown, and usually happened in the early hours of morning—and while all these are devastating, there is no denying that fires have been instrumental in shaping the landscape of the downtown area. In the 2000 fire that consumed the first Times Mercantile and Ricky’s Bakery and Grocery Store, the whole episode began around 5 A.M., and in its wake caused 10 million pesos worth of property damage, and the lives of two sisters, Natalie and Ivy Acuña. Fr. Sagun writes of that terrible night: “According to the only survivor, Ronnie Baldoza, a working baker from Ricky’s, the hotdog freezer had a short circuit and caught fire. The two sisters, together with [Ronnie], tried to [contain] the fire with a fire extinguisher,” but the highly flammable materials that were stocked around the store fueled the flames too quickly, and Ronnie managed to escape, but the sisters had passed out from smoke inhalation.”

The new fire, which originated from the clothing store beside Times, lasted five hours long, according to reports by Raffy Cabristante for GMA News. Many of the boarding houses within the block were not spared, although most of the commercial frontages nearby are still intact because of their high firewalls. In retrospect, that now-gone old building housing Times Mercantile had indeed seen better times—but it was a grand wooden one of a style that used to grace the streets of Dumaguete, some of which still remain and are in perfect need for restoration. What will rise from the ashes of that building? The landscape of Dumaguete changes some more.