Glorietta drama: Tragedy struck on a typical Pinoy weekend at the mall

Friday was a typical weekend. Employees were in a rush to go home. Others wanted to unwind inside an air-conditioned mall after a weeklong work. However, tragedy was lurking. Pain from death and injury awaited 10 individuals, 113 people, and lots of families and friends. And so it happened. About 1:30 p.m., frightening roars were heard. Glasses shattered from a sharp blast, which also shook the floors and shops of Glorietta 2 mall in Makati City. Thick, choking dust covered the place. Tons of debris plunged into the basement. Water at the mall’s underground area rose to the knees. The blast threw the victims’ bodies like that of dolls. Blood spurted onto the floors, the panes, the walls of the mall. “Para siyang hayop na sinabugan (She was like a helpless animal that died in a blast)," retired officer Julian Marcos said as he cursed the misfortune that took the life of his daughter Janine, 17, a nursing student. Julian could not understand why it happened, and who made it happen. “Marami akong natulungan na ibang tao. Yung anak ko, that time, ni hindi ko natulungan (I was able to help a lot of people, but not my daughter during the blast), he told GMA's "Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho." He did not know the enemy, but Julian swore he wanted a fight. Yung naglagay ng bomba, kahit mag one-on-one na lang kami (I challenge the perpetrator to face me in a fight)." Aida Peregrina, meanwhile, wanted a more “humane" death for her son Lester, who was an employee at Glorietta. “Mabuti pa sana, nagkasakit na lang siya…Kinuha na lang siya ng Diyos… Di kaparis nito aksidente. Masakit talaga… biglaan (I would prefer if my son died from sickness, then I would know that God took him from me. Unlike dying from an accident. It pains me. His death was too sudden)," she told GMA's "Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho." Friends and relatives of the victims attended Mass on Saturday, with the mall owner, the Ayala family, vowing to help the families of those who were killed and over a hundred others who were hurt in the incident. “Obviously we’re very shocked we felt terrible ... We’re focusing on (helping) the families (of the victims). We leave it to the police to make any statement on what happened here," Fernando Zobel de Ayala said. The enemy remains unknown. Communists condemned the blast. A group of Abu Sayyaf bandits in Basilan said it was not behind the explosion. And even the cause of the incident still puzzles investigators. Radio dzBB on Saturday reported that experts from the Philippine Data Bomb Center (PDBC) saw no indication that a bomb caused the blast, after they tested 15 swab samples from the mall’s second and third floors. The same report quoted the PDBC’s deputy chief, Major Raynold Rosero as saying that investigators did not find scraps or traces of bombs from the piles of debris at the explosion site. Earlier, a chemist from the Philippine National Police’s Crime Laboratory said residues of RDX or royal demolition explosive, a main component in making C-4 military grade plastic explosive, were found on the site. However, DzBB quoted Rosero as saying that it could not be hastily concluded that a bomb was used in the blast just because RDX residues were present in the explosion site. The report said that aside from being a C-4 ingredient, RDX is also used for pharmacological products. But nobody wants to continuously live in fear. On Saturday night, Filipino and foreign loyal shoppers of Glorietta appeared to have recovered from the shock. “As far as I know, it hasn’t been confirmed that there is a bomb. I live here in Ayala. I was very sad… (But) you cannot always live your life in constant fear," said New Yorker Suzanne Perry, 27, a resident in Ayala and a micro-financing researcher in one of the companies in the country. For her part, Maimai Dubmon, 35, a staff of one of the stalls in the mall selling cellular phone accessories and phone cards, said that their sales remained normal in spite of the tragedy. “We heard the loud explosion, but since it is now the ‘ber’ month (referring to September, October, November and December) we only thought it came from firecrackers. We are nervous, but ours is business as usual. We need to get income," she said. - GMANews.TV