Fire kills 8 in the Philippines after flames gutted a residential building in less than an hour

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A fire gutted a three-story residential building early Thursday in less than an hour in the Philippines' capital region, killing eight people, officials said.

The blaze, which also injured at least one resident, broke out after midnight in the building, which was mostly made of wood, as people slept in San Isidro Galas village in suburban Quezon city, officials said.

An investigation was underway to determine the cause of the fire.

Two of the dead were found on the ground floor and the bodies of six others were recovered on the second floor, where the fire apparently started, senior fire officer Rolando Valeña told The Associated Press, citing witnesses.

Beverly Salvador, 33, said that she, her husband and two children scrambled to escape from their third-floor room by crawling out of a small window in their bathroom as the flames and thick suffocating smoke spread quickly through the lower floors in a near-death experience. They landed on the roof of a neighboring house.

“I opened our door and saw that the corridor and the stairway going down were already in flames, so I asked my husband to find another way out,” Salvador told the AP. She added that she wept after learning that two families, which were longtime friends, all perished on the second floor.

The blaze happened just two days before the Philippines marks fire-prevention month in March, when the government launches an annual campaign to raise awareness about fire hazards before the onset of the scorching summer season.

Many deadly fires in the Philippines have been blamed on poor enforcement of safety regulations, overcrowding and faulty building designs.

A 1996 disco fire in Quezon city killed 162 people, mostly students celebrating the end of the school year, in one of the deadliest nightclub fires in the world in recent decades. They were unable to escape because the emergency exit was blocked by a new building next door.