Authorities are now investigating the cause of the fire that hit one of the train cars of the Metro Rail Transit Line 3 (MRT-3) which injured eight passengers on Saturday night, Oct. 9.

MRT-3 Director for Operations Michael Capati said the management has already instructed Sumitomo Corporation, the rail line’s maintenance provider, to conduct a thorough investigation into the incident.

“We already started yesterday the visual and the actual assessment. The investigation will proceed today. We will be meeting with them to discuss what is the timeline so we can get the final results,” Capati said in an interview on Monday, Oct. 11.

“We just really wanted to know what really happened to that particular light rail vehicle considering that they passed our train preparation testing prior deployment,” he added.

According to Capati, a systems check was implemented right after the fire incident and it was found out that the affected train coach is yet to be overhauled.

The MRT-3 has been completing the overhaul of its train cars as part of the rail line’s massive rehabilitation program.

Meanwhile, Capati assured that they will continue to regularly conduct safety and security measures on all of its train before deploying to the mainline.

Based on the report released by the MRT-3, the last car of a northbound train at the interstation of Buendia and Guadalupe caught fire around 9:12 p.m. on Saturday.

Mainline technicians were able to uncouple the two other cars from the defective car before the fire was declared out at 9:51 p.m.

Four women and four men passengers reportedly sustained minor bruises on their arms and legs after jumping to the mainline tracks to escape the burning train.

Both the MRT-3 management and Sumitomo Corporation apologized over the incident and vowed to take “necessary countermeasures to prevent its repeat.”