Hong Kong Tower Block Fire Death Toll Reaches 128

The Guardian

Scene from the Hong Kong apartment complex that caught fire.

The death toll from the Hong Kong apartment complex fire that began on Wednesday has risen to 128 with as many as 200 missing, officials have said, as rescue operations were declared over.

Firefighters were combing through the high-rises on Friday morning, attempting to find anyone alive after the massive fire that spread to seven of eight towers in one of the city’s deadliest ever blazes.

Authorities said they had recovered 108 bodies from the buildings, but 16 were still inside. Four people died of injuries in hospital, Chris Tang, the city’s security secretary told the media on Friday afternoon. Another 79 people, including 11 firefighters, had been injured. About 200 people were still unaccounted for, and 89 of the bodies had not yet been identified.

The head of the fire services, Andy Yeung, confirmed what many residents had been claiming for days: that no fire alarms went off in any of the eight towers. “We will take enforcement actions against the contractors responsible,” he said.

The officials said the fire was out but they needed to wait for the building to cool down before they could enter some areas, where temperatures were still upwards of 200C. They estimated it would take three to four weeks to collect evidence.

Throughout the morning more people arrived at the Kwong Fuk estate community centre, adjacent to the towers, to identify the bodies being pulled from the gutted buildings. Few names of the dead have been released to the public yet, and Tang declined to release demographic information of those confirmed lost.

Yeung said: “The fire in the building was extremely intense, with temperatures at the scene reaching 500 degrees, sometimes exceeding that.” That made it difficult to reach high floors, he added.

“The interior spaces of the building were very narrow … Firefighters had to carry out operations unit by unit, floor by floor, and the units were cluttered with a large amount of items.”

The blaze, which began on Wednesday afternoon, spread quickly through the Wang Fuk Court housing complex in the northern district of Tai Po. The eight-tower estate housing more than 4,600 people had been undergoing renovations and was wrapped in bamboo scaffolding and green mesh.

On Friday afternoon Tang said the green mesh was up to safety standards. Instead they believed the highly flammable polystyrene foam discovered in every elevator window was the primary cause of the fire’s intensity. He said the fire started from the lower part of the Wang Cheong tower, first in the mesh, then the foam, before spreading inside the building. High temperatures broke windows, allowing the fire to spread from unit to unit, helped along by high winds and falling debris from the burning mesh and scaffolding, Tang said.

Hong Kong’s labour department said the building contractor had been reminded repeatedly in writing to take appropriate fire prevention measures after inspections over the last year revealed unsafe working practices. The most recent inspection was on 20 November.

However, the labour department also said that the risk of fire on the site was deemed to be relatively low and that the scaffold netting appeared to meet the standards for flame-retardant performance.

Most of the dead were found in two of the seven towers that caught fire, and most survivors were pulled from the others. The number of missing had not been updated since early Thursday when it was more than 250.

A man identified only as Mr Lau said his parents were still missing, but he believed they hadn’t survived. Sobbing, he told reporters he had no information. “At the scene I know nothing,” he said. “I just want to know if my parents are alive or dead. If they’ve died I don’t want to even see the bodies, I only want to know they’re gone so at least I won’t keep worrying.”

Another resident who lived on the 10th floor of one of the towers told the Guardian her family was fine but her neighbours were missing. “I don’t want to watch TV, I don’t want to look at community groups, I don’t want to read any news on my phone,” she said. “I just want life to go back to normal, but right now it feels very difficult.”

Indonesia’s consul general, Yul Edison, arrived on Friday afternoon to help with identification of the deceased.

Many Indonesians work as domestic helpers in apartments like those at Wang Fuk Court. Edison told reporters at least one Indonesian national was among the dead. A spokesperson for the Mission for Migrant Workers NGO said there were 11 Indonesian domestic helpers still missing, from 119 known to live in the building.

The Philippines consulate said one Filipina domestic worker was still missing, one was injured, and 24 were accounted for.

A crowdsourced web app has collated reports from people about each building, identifying individual apartments in each tower, with available details of the residents.

“A 41-year-old man went missing at 16.45,” said one report from block F, where the fire began. “His last message was that he was trapped in stairwell 25-26.” Another report confirms the death of a 60-year-old man, a 90-year-old woman and a 40-year-old Indian national who lived with them as a domestic helper in an 11th-floor apartment. Eight floors above them, four people were reported to have died in one apartment.

Police and corruption authorities are investigating the cause of the fire. Three people from a construction company involved in the years-long renovation of the complex were arrested.

The fire has prompted calls for stronger fire safety laws in the construction sector.

“There’s no law stipulating that flame-retardant materials must be used,” Lee Kwong-sing, the chair of Hong Kong Institute of Safety Practitioner said, according to the state broadcasting service RTHK.

“It is merely stated in the codes of practice by the labour department, so many people may not follow the requirements as it is not illegal. But if you turn such codes into a mandatory requirement … then that’ll be another story altogether.”

Article was originally published by The Guardian.



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