Watch: Massive Fire Engulfs Manila's Binondo Area Over 2,000 Houses Razed

Manila's waterfront burned for more than nine hours from Saturday afternoon to past midnight of Sunday, smouldering 2,000 households and rendering more than 7,000 homeless.

The Philippine capital's Parola District adjacent to the reputed oldest Chinatown in the world was demolished by the blaze, creating another humanitarian crisis in the city's biggest slum area. A fire also broke out in the area only last May 6.

It took hundreds of fire trucks as well as Coast Guard fireboats to put the blaze under control, made difficult by narrow streets and limited access roads to the mini-peninsula built on a river delta. Smoke rising from the fire could be seen from hundreds of kilometres out the sea.

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Watch the aerial footage of the blaze taken by the Manila Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Department:

Victims of the fire are currently staying in basketball courts near the area while humanitarian organisations have already begun asking for donations such as drinking water, food items and clothing to be given to affected families.

Manila Mayor Francisco Domagoso said the city government is thinking of providing P15 million worth of immediate cash assistance to the victims to help them rebuild their shanties as soon as the Bureau of Fire Protection is done putting out the embers.

One of the Philippines' oldest settlements, the compound is an informal community of stevedores (dockworkers) in the nearby seaport and business establishments of Manila's Chinatown.

It was named after the Spanish colonial era lighthouse (Spanish: Parola) that was the first to be built in the country to guide trade ships from Acapulco, Mexico into the mouth of Manila's Pasig River.

Because of its historic significance and strategic location near Chinatown's expensive real estate, however, Parola residents are asking if the successive fires have been deliberately started to drive them out of the area.

Community organisation Pagkakaisa ng Mamamayan ng Tundo (PAMATU, Unity of Tondo Residents) said so-called development projects want their communities demolished to give way to upscale housing projects to add to Domagoso's Binondominium 1 & 2, at Tondominium.

The Ferdinand Marcos Jr. administration have also announced the Port Town Housing Project under the president's 4PH or Pambansang Pabahay para sa Pilipino Program (National Housing for Filipinos) initiative.

“There's also the privately-owned North-South Harbor Bridge and the Southern Access Link Expressway projects of billionaire Enrique Razon planned to run through Parola,” PAMATU leader Rod Dherick Emboido said.

Baseco Island, adjacent to Parola and home to hundreds of thousands of poor Manila residents also fear demolition due to the bridge and expressway projects that are being funded by the Exim Bank of China and built by the China Road and Bridge Corporation.

“Amid all these so-called development projects, why do we remain poor? Are these fires really accidental?” Emboido asked.

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