OLONGAPO CITY: Three Americans and a South Korean man were among the six people who died on Friday when a fire razed a small hotel in Brgy. Barretto, Olongapo City.

Six bodies, also including those of two women, were recovered after a pre-dawn blaze swept through the Dryden Hotel in the entertainment district of the northern port city of Olongapo, site of a former United States naval base in the Philippines, local police said.

In a short statement, police said that three of the victims were American men, and another was a South Korean.

The bodies of the two Filipino women were not immediately identified. Reports identified the American victims as Patrick Burk, James Brigati and Joe Valoso, while the Korean was identified as Hyung Ook Kim.

Angie Layug, head of the Olongapo Risk Reduction Management Office, said in a report that one of the Americans was trapped on the staircase, while the other two died in their respective rooms.
Layug said that the three Americans may have belonged to the “fairly large” population of retired American servicemen who live in and around Olongapo.

Many settled there after the US military pulled out of the nearby Subic Naval Base in 1991, Layug said.

Layug said that the hotel was owned by a retired American serviceman.

With a report from AFP