Short answer. Generally no, if it is a true state of necessity. Under Article 11(4) of the Revised Penal Code, a person who damages another's property to avoid a greater evil incurs no criminal liability, provided the evil avoided actually existed, the injury feared was greater than the damage done, and there was no other practical, less harmful means.
What the law says
do not incur any criminal liability
Revised Penal Code, Article 11 — Justifying Circumstances: Self-Defence And Defence Of Others. Read the full provision →
What the law says
Any person who, in order to avoid an evil or injury, does an act which causes damage to another
Revised Penal Code, Article 11 — Justifying Circumstances: Self-Defence And Defence Of Others. Read the full provision →
What the law says
That the evil sought to be avoided actually exists
Revised Penal Code, Article 11 — Justifying Circumstances: Self-Defence And Defence Of Others. Read the full provision →
What the law says
That the injury feared be greater than that done to avoid it
Revised Penal Code, Article 11 — Justifying Circumstances: Self-Defence And Defence Of Others. Read the full provision →
What the law says
That there be no other practical and less harmful means of preventing it
Revised Penal Code, Article 11 — Justifying Circumstances: Self-Defence And Defence Of Others. Read the full provision →
State of necessity is a justifying circumstance
Article 11 lists justifying circumstances — cases where a person do not incur any criminal liability. Its fourth paragraph is the "state of necessity": Any person who, in order to avoid an evil or injury, does an act which causes damage to another, provided the stated requisites are present. The classic example is exactly yours — breaking or damaging property to escape a fire, a flood or a similar danger. Because it is a justifying circumstance, an act that genuinely fits is not a crime at all; the law regards the choice of the lesser harm as lawful.
The three requisites
The defense is tightly conditioned. First, That the evil sought to be avoided actually exists — a merely imagined or speculative danger is not enough. Second, That the injury feared be greater than that done to avoid it — you may only sacrifice the smaller interest to save the larger, so the property damage must be less than the harm you were escaping. Third, That there be no other practical and less harmful means of preventing it — if a safer option was realistically available, you were bound to take it. All three must hold together; a gap in any one removes the justification.
Weighing the harms is the heart of it
The core of paragraph 4 is proportion. The law lets you damage property only to avoid a genuinely greater evil, and only when there was no gentler way out. This is why panic or convenience will not do: the danger must be real and present, and the response must be the least harmful one actually open to you. Because you are the one invoking the justification, you generally carry the burden of showing the emergency existed, that what you saved outweighed what you destroyed, and that no reasonable, less damaging alternative was available at the time.
No jail, but you may still owe for the damage
An important caution: even a valid state of necessity does not always mean nobody pays for the loss. While the person acting is freed from criminal liability, the Revised Penal Code makes the persons who benefited from the avoidance of the evil civilly liable for the damage, in proportion to the benefit they received. So the owner of the damaged property is not simply left to bear the loss. The justification answers the criminal question — no crime — while the civil question of who compensates the owner is handled separately under the Code's rules.