Don’t rush - Terrorist Attack or Accident?

We do not know who was the first to raise the possibility that a liquefied petroleum gas tank caused the explosion at the Glorietta 2 mall. Perhaps it was an eyewitness or perhaps it was a radio commentator speculating on air. But a few hours after the explosion, this theory was firmly set aside, and by responsible officers of the country’s armed services.

The blast was most likely caused by a “hard explosive,” Chief Insp. Reynold Rosero of the Philippine Bomb Data Center told reporters. (He also described the event as “most likely a deliberate attack.”) Philippine National Police (PNP) Director General Avelino Razon echoed the line later in the day.

The day after the blast, Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon issued a categorical statement. “It is a terrorist attack,” he said.

That same day, the PNP Crime Laboratory and the Bomb Data Center told the National Security Council meeting in Camp Crame that they had found traces of RDX, an ingredient used in such explosives as C4, which is used by the military.

But the following day, Sunday, the wind began to change direction. The police director for Metro Manila, Geary Barias, soft-pedaled the previous day’s assertion that RDX was found, saying its presence would have to be verified by “additional testing.”

This change came on the heels of the rather odd announcement, late on Saturday, that the blast originated from the basement of the mall.

“The explosion came from the underground, that’s why there was a crater-like structure in the stairs going to the basement,” Rosero of the Bomb Data Center told reporters. Aside from the curious construction of that statement (did the police officer say a crater in the stairs?), there is also the inconvenient fact that Makati City Councilor Jun-Jun Binay had already told the media, on the day of the blast, that the explosion left an eight-meter-wide crater on the ground floor.

Even without that conflict in testimony, however, Rosero’s unqualified assertion that the blast started in the basement was rather premature. Why? Because on the day he said that, the basement in question was still heavily flooded. (There were mentions of the flooding in the early stories.)

Where did the water come from? From two tanks in the area, one containing water for firefighting purposes, the other water for ordinary use. Thus, in the first few days after the blast, not a single person entered the basement, because the water was filthy and deep.

How can anyone say on Saturday, and categorically, that the blast emanated from the basement?

By late Monday, the authorities had changed their principal theory. Without dismissing the possibility that the Glorietta tragedy was a terrorist bombing, the investigators said the blast could have been the result of an industrial accident.

Fire Supt. Fenniore Jaudian told police reporters an “accumulation of methane” in the basement could have caught fire and, in the process, caused the diesel tank in the basement (used to run emergency power generators) to explode.

Chemical engineers from the University of the Philippines have come forward to make their skepticism about the “methane + diesel” theory public. To be sure, they have not visited the site, and they have prefaced their remarks with qualifying statements. And yet in principle, their reservations about the theory should give any reasonable person pause. Diesel is famously non-volatile; methane build-up requires a confined space and a stagnant supply of solid waste.

It seems to us that for the new theory to work, the threshold of conditions assumed to exist is rather high.

We recognize, of course, that theories change as more facts emerge. We understand that, aside from that stray remark about RDX traces being found, not much else points to a bomb. But we also realize that in some high-profile terrorist acts, it took government investigators some time to prove that bombs were in fact used.

We acknowledge the investigators’ readiness to continue considering the bombing angle -- they were, after all, the first to consider it. We recognize their testing of new theories as consistent with the emergence of new facts. We believe, however, that their main duty, at this time, is to ascertain all the necessary facts. Unless these are established, any theory offered to the public is a rush to judgment.