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John Unson - Philstar.com
February 4, 2026 | 7:24pm
Almost all of the houses destroyed by the fire that hit Barangay Lamion in Bongao, Tawi-Tawi were made only of semi-permanent materials.
Philstar.com / John Unson
COTABATO CITY, Philippines — A fire of still undetermined origin razed no fewer than a thousand stilt houses in the seaside Barangay Lamion in Bongao island town in Tawi-Tawi in the Bangsamoro region on Tuesday night, February 3.
Local executives in Tawi-Tawi, officials of different agencies of the Bangsamoro regional government and members of its 80-seat parliament in Cotabato City told reporters on Wednesday that the villagers displaced by the conflagration are now in evacuation sites in Bongao and in the campus of the Mindanao State University in the municipality.
Bongao is the capital town of Tawi-Tawi, one of the five provinces in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, whose regional capitol is in uptown area in Cotabato City.
Tawi-Tawi Gov. Ysmael Sali and the representative of their province to the BARMM parliament, the lawyer Jet Lim, said emergency responders from the provincial government and local executives in Bongao are now attending to the needs of the villagers from Barangay Lamion.
Officials of the Bureau of Fire Protection in their regional office in Cotabato City said their subordinates in the Bongao Municipal Fire Station, barangay officials and employees of the Bongao Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office are together investigating what caused the conflagration that lasted for almost six hours.
BFP regional officials and Brig. Gen. Jaysen De Guzman, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, relayed to reporters on Wednesday that the fire destroyed no less than a thousand stilt houses, so close to each other, at a seashore in Barangay Lamion.
“Our units in Tawi-Tawi are helping in relief works for the residents who are now in evacuation sites,” De Guzman said.
Lim, who is spokesperson of the BARMM parliament, told reporters that Bangsamoro Health Minister Kadil Sinolinding, Jr. and his counterpart in the region’s social services ministry, the lawyer Raissa Jajurie, have mobilized relief workers in their provincial offices in Tawi-Tawi to embark on humanitarian interventions for thousands of villagers affected by the disaster.
