Doubtful attack...

(forwarded email fr. my yahoomail)

I started writing this piece Sunday evening, very doubtful that the Glorietta blast was caused by a terrorist’s bomb.

The purpose of a terrorist’s bomb is to cause as many casualties as possible. The logical place to plant the bomb is in the middle of a huge crowd – such as the one that killed 136 people during the motorcade for Benazir Bhutto in Karachi ( Pakistan ) just the day before.

Or the terrorist will plant the bomb in a high traffic area where many people walk around, such as in a public market or a bus station – such as has happened many times in Iraq and Afghanistan .

By all accounts, the explosion last Friday in Makati ’s Glorietta occurred in a basement service area where there are NO pedestrians or shoppers milling about, and where entry is actually restricted to authorized personnel only.

The high number of casualties - 11 dead and more than 100 wounded – can be explained by the fact that the explosion/s punched a 2-metter hole in the ceiling – the floor of the ground floor or atrium floor of Glorietta 2 – the force collapsing one of the escalators and blowing the plastic skylights, three floors up, away.

Most of the wounded must have been hit by flying objects –glass, metal, masonry, wood – scattered by the blast. Most of the fatalities and the seriously injured must have been near Ground Zero and were killed by the concussion or were hit by collapsing walls and other heavy objects.

The point is the casualty list would have been much longer if the supposed terrorist had packed his bomb with thousands of ball bearings and nails, as is usual SOP among terrorists, and detonated it in the center hall of Glorietta with thousands of shoppers milling about on a busy Friday afternoon.

Putting the “bomb” in an enclosed basement area, which is inaccessible to the general public, just does not make sense if the purpose is to cause maximum casualties. There are also no reports of any injuries due to ball bearings or nails, many of which would still be evident in or near the basement service area, if they were indeed used.

Investigators should go back to their original assessment, that this was probably caused by an LPG gas tank/s explosion. I do not understand why PNP director general Avelino Razon dropped the plausible LPG explanation and embraced the terrorist bomb story, based allegedly on traces of RDX in the debris, which eventually were found to be non-existent. I also do not understand why Ayala Land , landowner of the property, insisted it was a terrorist bomb that did it, even with the paucity of evidence for it.

I understand from someone who has done some work in the premises that this basement service area is where the cooking gas cylinders of several nearby restaurants – Luk Yuen, Kimpura, Peking Garden , etc - are stored, to which each kitchen is connected by individual copper tubing lines, which are metered for consumption..

Certainly these gas cylinders are not of the 11-kilo household size, but of the large 50-kilo restaurant size. And each restaurant must have three or four of these cylinders on hand at any one time. If this assumption is correct, there may have been at least nine to 12 heavy duty gas cylinders in that basement area that day.

But, of course, gas cylinders do not just explode for no reason. One of them may have been leaking. And in the enclosed space of the basement service area, a gas build-up can be lethal. A lighted match, a cigarette, a cigarette lighter, even the tiny spark in a cell phone can cause the gas-rich air to flame up and the leaking gas cylinder to explode, all in a fraction of a second.

There are also unverified reports that there was on-going construction work in that basement service area, involving acetylene gas equipment.

The force of this initial explosion would have dislodged other cylinders from their copper tubing connections, thus causing these decapitated cylinders to also leak and explode, all in a fraction of a second. It must have been this second, more massive explosion that punched a hole through the ceiling/floor and caused most of the casualties, especially since the expanding gas from these decapitated cylinders would explode upward .

This would be consistent with the testimony of one female survivor who was interviewed by TV anchor Chiqui Roa on ANC last Saturday. The survivor said she heard TWO explosions: one relatively light, followed by a massive one.

I am finishing this article Monday morning. I am surprised to read in the newspapers that investigators had blamed the explosion on a bomb even before they could gather any chemical evidence in the service area where the blast occurred, supposedly because that area was flooded. At least two days were wasted, during which chemical evidence in that service area could have been tampered with, erased, planted or removed. Accidentally or otherwise..

Investigators would have to swab the walls and fixtures in that area to determine the chemical composition of the explosive. If the blast was caused by TNT, dynamite or gun powder (or their derivatives), the walls and fixtures in that area would be coated with a film of nitrate residue. I do not know the active chemical in RDX or C-4, but they would also leave a distinctive chemical signature.

If the walls and fixtures in that area are coated with nothing more than carbon ash, then the source of the explosion was likely either LPG or – another proffered culprit – methane gas, supposedly from raw sewage. Was this room a septic tank, for chrissakes, right next to a restaurant?. Another proffered culprit – diesel fuel – is even less plausible. Diesel fuel does not gasify (or explode) at room temperature.

But why this insistent denial of even the possibility that it was LPG that did it? Does it have to do with insurance and liability claims?

Only after the walls of the blast zone have been swabbed, and swabs analyzed – which should have been done right after the explosion - can anyone say with any finality if the blast was an act of terrorism or was nothing but a tragic accident. *****