DAVAO CITY – The cause of the explosion that ripped through the stockroom of the Explosive Ordnance Division at the Davao City Police Office on Black Saturday remains unknown though explosives which were kept as court evidence have been moved to a safer place.
DCPO director Police Col. Alexander Tagum said yesterday the cause of the explosion is still under investigation as he urged everyone not to speculate on the cause of the incident.
“We can’t speculate on what was exploded because presently, a post-blast investigation was conducted by the EOD team led by Major Garcia of the Police Regional Office 11 that supervises the accounting and readership operation inside the stock room of DCPO’s EOD unit,” Tagum said.
Tagum said those explosives were kept in custody of the DCPO EOD unit as court evidence. Among the explosives were grenades seized from the Maute family which was arrested at the Sirawan checkpoint in 2017 following the Marawi City siege.
“In spite of its proper storage (in accordance to EOD Storage Standard), it accidentally exploded – for a still unknown reason,” he said.
He also denied that the stockroom contains mixed materials for explosives. “It’s not true, the unexploded explosive ordnance (UXO) that are vintage bomb recovered (from construction activities) were placed in another area while the materials for court evidence were in another area of the stock room,” he said.
“Under the EOD protocol on the proper disposal of recovered evidence cannot be just disposed right away. In fact, that is the common problem of the courts wherein the recovered grenades are considered active explosive,” he added.
Tagum admitted that one of their problems is the proper storage of court evidence like a grenade.
“But they are in the secured area and for the information of everyone we are looking even before, for proper disposal, unfortunately, our request is still pending,” he said. “But for now, we can’t say what are those court evidence that has been affected,” he added. (PNA and Armando Fenequito Jr.)
