CEBU CITY, Cebu, Philippines – A father and his two sons died at dawn Sunday due to suffocation while manually extracting waste from a septic tank of a lodging house in Carcar City, 40 kilometers south of here.
The victims – Mario Nacua, 45, and his sons Marvin, 21, and Melvin 20, all from Sitio Tinaan (a settlement), Barangay (village) Valencia, Carcar City – were separately declared dead on arrival at the Carcar District Hospital from between 2:24 a.m. to almost 6 a.m. on Sunday, said SPO1 Melito Agadier Jr., desk officer of the Carcar City Police Office.
Their cousin Romnick Alibango, who was also working with the Nacuas, was spared as he did not enter the septic tank for the cleanup activity, according to Mario’s sister-in-law Chille Tangaro.
Agadier said the Nacuas were cleaning the septic tank of Traveler’s Inn, located in sitio Tangasan, Valladolid, Carcar, in the early hours of Sunday when they fainted, said Tangaro.
Personnel from the city’s fire department rushed to rescue the Nacuas after the police got the report about the incident at 2 a.m. but the three were already unresponsive when they were fished out from the septic tank, according to Agadier.
Based on the record of the Carcar District Hospital, Mario was declared dead on arrival (DOA) at 2:24 a.m., then Melvin and Marvin were also declared DOA at 5:40 a.m. and 5:46 a.m. respectively.
Agadier said they were still investigating why the three got suffocated and if they had adequate protection from the toxic fumes coming from the septic tank.
Agadier said the Nacuas were hired by a Henie Fernandez, the owner of the inn, to clean up their septic tank.
Agadier said some witnesses claimed that the father, Mario, was the first one to enter the septic tank. When the two sons noticed that something had happened to their father, they also went inside the septic tank.
“They could have been suffocated by the methane gas (coming from the septic tank),” Agadier said.
Tangaro, the sister of Mario’s wife Berna, said her brother-in-law and two nephews had been doing septic tank clean-up services for three to four years now.
She said her brother-in-law was usually the one who would go to establishments and houses in the city offering his service to clean up septic tanks.
Tangaro said the Nacuas and their cousin Alibango started the cleanup operation at the inn at about 9 p.m. on Saturday. –Jhunnex Napallacan, Inquirer Visayas
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