2 workers die of suffocation in Zamboanga City fuel station storage tank

COTABATO CITY—Two laborers on Wednesday died of suffocation inside a petroleum storage tank in a fuel retail station in Zamboanga City.

They were supposed to clean and fix the cracks on the concrete pavement above it.

Initial reports released at noontime Wednesday by the Zamboanga City local government unit and officials the Police Regional Office-9 identified the fatalities as Joel Dungog, 34, and the 30-year-old Jomar Cagit, whom emergency responders tried to resuscitate but failed.

The underground fuel storage facility they were hired to clean is in the premises of a Phoenix Station along a highway in Barangay Curuan in Zamboanga City.

Responding police investigators and barangay officials were quoted in radio reports as saying that it was the companion of Dungog and Cagit, the 23-year-old Jonas Calderon, who first accidentally fell into the tank through a contraption hole on top of it.

Dungog and Cagit immediately got inside the tank and managed to push Calderon out upward before they collapsed, both already unconscious as rescuers pulled them out one after another.

Barangay leaders had asked local executives and officials of the Department of Labor and Employment based in Zamboanga City to compel the owner of the Phoenix Station to compensate the families of the two laborers who perished in the incident.