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MANILA, Philippines (AP) - A fire raced through one of the capital’s most crowded slums Tuesday on a day of stifling hot weather. Its flames left thousands homeless after destroying their homes, and did extensive damage to the community, too. Extremely casual Urbanization - THIS IS A BIG ISSUE Thousands of Houses burnt for 8 hours, and hundreds of thousands were homeless as a consequence The world witnessed the plight of refugees living in shanties: compulsory pooling in the city-ring of fire to slum you into wanag - and are disaster doomed fire.

The Slum Area in Manila offers an insight into informal settlements scattered across the city

The slum in which the fire developed was one of many shantytowns scattered in and around Metro Manila, the sprawling capital region of more than 13 million. These settlements, or “barangays,” are often made up of poor families who have built homes on vacant land or riverside or other land not intended for residential purposes. Their homes are often built close to each other and made of highly combustible materials like plyboard, cardboard and plastic sheets. While the better part of these settlements have their source of electricity, they lack any proper fire safety measures which makes them highly prone to fire hazards.

The area hardest hit in the Manila fire was a dense slum in Tondo, one of the city’s poorest districts. A hardscrabble enclave for thousands of poor ones since at least the 1960s, Tondo is mostly a struggling, overcrowded housing development. The slum is a maze of narrow alleyways and makeshift housing, very little infrastructure exists that would help in an emergency like a fire. Improper roads and no clean water supply made it difficult for firetrucks and rescuers to reach the area to douse flames.

From the Inception to Growth of Fire

The fire began in the afternoon, witnesses said, in a small house on the edge of the slum. While the cause of the fire has not yet been determined, faulty electrical wiring or an open flame, both common sources of fires seen in informal settlements, could have triggered it. Once the fire was set, it quickly tore through the crowd of closely bunched houses and the very combustible wooden materials with which the homes had been constructed. Because most of the houses were made of light, combustible materials, the fire had no trouble consuming them. Flames belch out heat and billowing clouds of smoke that blackened the sky over Tondo.

Firefighters responded quickly to the scene, but the tough conditions remained. It was hard for the fire trucks to reach the fire, which was inside a block of two-story buildings on narrow streets and alleys. In most of the slums, where houses were tightly packed together, firefighters could not use their hoses. It was the beginning of a disaster, experts say. Some didn’t even have a chance to save their belongings, and others had to abandon their homes in the dead of night.

For more than eight hours, flames raged, only coming under control by early the next day. Hundreds of homes had been burned down, and thousands had been left homeless.

The Effect: Permanent Change in Lives

The fire had left signs of the wreckage of everything. Houses that had once been filled with bustling family life were reduced to piles of ash and rubble. Many had lived in the slum for years, without anything but the clothes on their back. That conversion transformed them - all of them - into permanent refugees, with nowhere to go. To a lot of residents it was not just a disaster it was an event that changed their lives. For the poor, it was especially dreadful. But most people could not afford to rebuild their houses, or even replace necessities like clothes and cooking pots.

Some went to ground, others got nabbed - or rather nabbed in the headlong flight. About two-thirds of the deaths were reported in Adams County, the sheriff’s office said in a statement. Many thousands remained in temporary accommodation - evacuation centres, for example - following the fire. When there were shelters, they were overcrowded even without the basics of things like clean water, sanitation and even medical care. They were tight 4-style rooms, with no privacy; if someone wanted to go to the bathroom, they couldn't move.

But Part Of Why It's So Hard Too Rebuild

It’s never easy to pick up and begin rebuilding after such a catastrophic fire. In Tondo, poverty is uncensored, and so when people lose their homes, the cycle continues with most families having no way of helping each other break free of it. Their wives were in labour, there was a curfew in Ludong province, the government or Ngo were no longer dishing it out by the bucket and some would have to depend on muscle and grit to begin anew yet medicine and money were still required.

Even then - and in the best case - the government agreed to donate materials to reconstruct where it needed to - but some families were still unable to put back anything anytime soon. Most of the residents couldn’t afford to pick up and leave, anyway, hell. It was a cycle of poverty before the fire disaster; now, that’s added more distance. Without the positive stabilizing effects of permanent housing, stable jobs or income, families often were unable to settle into any sort of normal rhythm of life.

And then, there was the emotional toll of the fire - far greater than financial loss. Many likened themselves to the proverbial little old lady from Pasadena; they lost everything they’d spent decades accumulating - a lifetime of work - and for some, especially those of advanced age, the fire was just one more hurdle in a lifetime filled with challenges.

An Act of the Government in Response to Fire Safety

The flames in Manila have sparked anguished questions about cluster fire safety and disaster preparedness in informal communities. Because the slums are numerous and there are few such settlements with the protection of water, electricity and infrastructure, torching is a hazard in several slum geographic areas in the Philippines, mainly in metropolis stuff like the money-associated capital Manila. Fires in such areas are often deadly and destructive because homes in some are built of cheap, easily ignitable materials and fire resources are scarce.

No, wait, the government promised to improve fire safety in slum settlements, but that is too big a task. These settlements are mostly illegal, and the residents do not have access to the type of services that would prevent disasters like fires. Building codes are seldom adhered to, and firefighting infrastructure is badly insufficient to combat the sheer size and density of such communities.

It was at the hands of a Delaware senator, on the day after the fire, who started to articulate the thoughts behind the national outpouring of charity that soon followed to aid the victims. The affected families were provided with emergency relief items such as food, water and medical assistance. There was longer ongoing help rebuilding homes and temporary settlements. But the road to recovery is going to be long and painful for many of its victims.

Conclusion: A Call for Change

Those who lost thousands of properties and everybody else during the 8-hour fire that ravaged the slum in Manila must have understood this by now. It exposed the grim conditions of life in many of the city’s informal settlements and illustrated an urgent need for better fire safety, disaster preparedness and government assistance. Even if the initial response to the fire was speedy, far more needs to be done to prevent similar tragedies in the future brought about by the grim facts of poverty and inadequate housing in shanty areas.

And as the people of Tondo and slum dwellers all over the congested sprawl of Manila pick themselves up, they must be able to ensure that such tragedies don’t happen again. Enhancing safety measures and living standards to further our most vulnerable citizens will go when local communities and organizations support Them and the government spearheading it. We will only be able to prevent similar tragic incidents such as what happened in Tondo by addressing the root causes of poverty and infrastructure deficiency. The eight-hour blaze might have burned its way out, but the repercussions will last for years. Help that will take many years to arrive, to rebuild lives, and we do not want to see this repeated in the future. Manila needs to take stock of its slums and ensure that its residents will not be swept away.