HONG KONG, Nov 29 (Reuters) – Hong Kong on Saturday mourned the 128 people known to have died in a massive fire at a high-rise apartment complex, a toll that is likely to rise with 150 still missing days after the disaster.
Authorities have arrested 11 people in connection with the city’s worst blaze in nearly 80 years as they investigate possible corruption and the use of unsafe materials during renovations at the Wang Fuk Court complex.
Rescue operations at the site in the district of Tai Po, near the border with mainland China, concluded on Friday, though police say they may find more bodies as they comb through the hazardous, burnt-out buildings in coming weeks.
Police revised down the number of people unaccounted for to 150 from 200 on Saturday, after confirming with some relatives that they had managed to reconnect with loved ones they initially reported as missing.
Hundreds of officers deployed to search for remains found no further bodies but rescued three cats and a turtle, police officials told a press conference.
The fire started on Wednesday afternoon and rapidly engulfed seven of the eight 32-storey blocks at the complex, which were wrapped in bamboo scaffolding and green mesh and layered with foam insulation for the renovations.
Mainland China on Saturday ordered a nationwide investigation of fire risks at high-rise buildings, especially residential blocks undergoing renovation.
SEARCH FOR BODIES CONTINUES
Authorities have said the fire alarms at the Wang Fuk Court estate, home to more than 4,600 people, had not been working properly.
Hong Kong leader John Lee, other officials and civil servants, all dressed in black, stood in silence for three minutes early on Saturday outside the central government offices, where flags were lowered to half-staff.
Condolence books have been set up at 18 points around the former British colony for the public to pay their respects.
“Our most heartfelt thoughts are with all those who have lost loved ones and with those that are now living with shock and uncertainty,” Britain’s King Charles said in a statement about the “appalling tragedy”.
At Wang Fuk Court, police officers wearing white overalls, helmets and oxygen masks, were seen clambering into the buildings over mounds of fallen bamboo scaffolding and around large puddles created after firefighters doused the buildings for days to try to lower the temperatures inside.
Search operations could take three to four weeks to complete, Hong Kong’s Home Secretary Alice Mak said. The two blocks searched on Saturday were the least damaged, police said.
Families and mourners gathered nearby to lay hundreds of bouquets of flowers while some faced the grim task of looking at photographs of the dead taken by rescue workers.
Christy Tang, 67, was searching for her friend, an outgoing retiree who enjoyed singing and sports. “We checked the photos of dead bodies trying to identify her but to no avail,” she said as she laid flowers in remembrance.
Domestic workers from Indonesia and the Philippines were also caught up in the tragedy. Hong Kong has around 368,000 such workers, mostly women from low-income Asian countries who live with their employers, often in cramped spaces.
Indonesia said six of its citizens died in the incident. The Philippines said one of its nationals was critically injured, another confirmed missing, while 28 were thought to be residents of the area but their whereabouts were unknown.
An injured worker from the Philippines, Rhodora Alcaraz, 28, cradled her employers’ 3-month-old baby in a wet blanket while trapped in a smoke-filled room for several hours before being rescued by firefighters, her sister Raychelle Loreto told Reuters.
“I’m feeling very weak. I can’t breathe,” she mumbled through sobs in a panicked audio message sent to her sister via Facebook as the situation escalated.
DEADLIEST BLAZE SINCE 1948
The fire is Hong Kong’s deadliest since 1948, when 176 people died in a warehouse blaze, and has prompted comparisons to London’s Grenfell Tower inferno, which killed 72 people in 2017.
Residents of Wang Fuk Court were told by authorities last year that they faced “relatively low fire risks” after complaining repeatedly about fire hazards posed by the ongoing renovation, the city’s Labour Department told Reuters.
The residents had raised concerns in September 2024, including about the potential flammability of the protective green mesh contractors had used to cover the bamboo scaffolding, a department spokesperson said.
Hong Kong’s anti-graft body said it had arrested eight people on Friday including an engineering consultant, a scaffolding subcontractor and an intermediary.
Earlier, police arrested two directors and an engineering consultant of Prestige Construction, a firm identified by the government as doing maintenance on Wang Fuk Court for more than a year, on suspicion of manslaughter for using unsafe materials, including flammable foam boards blocking windows.
Prestige did not answer repeated calls for comment.
ACTIVISTS CALL FOR INDEPENDENT PROBE
Public anger over the fire has so far been muted, a stark contrast to mass pro-democracy protests of 2019 that prompted Beijing to tighten its grip on the city.
Still, some frustrated volunteers were handing out flyers near the estate on Friday, demanding government accountability, an independent probe into possible corruption, proper resettlement for residents and a review of construction oversight.
An online petition stating their demands had gained around 10,000 signatures by Saturday afternoon.
As with other major fires like Grenfell, pressure for answers may quickly spread beyond the construction firms to government regulators.
Miles, a volunteer with the Tai Po Fire Concern Group who declined to give his surname given the sensitivity of the matter, said his group’s demands were “very basic”.
“The government should not oppose them. If it opposes them, it is too sensitive and irresponsible,” he said.
A spokesperson from China’s national security office in Hong Kong said in a statement on Saturday that they firmly support the city government to severely punish anyone who used “disaster to disrupt Hong Kong”.
(Reporting by John Geddie, Jessie Pang, James Pomfret, Farah Master, Mei Mei Chu, Tyrone Siu, Artorn Pookasook, Edmond Ng, Nicoco Chan and Yuddy Cahya Budiman in Hong Kong; Writing by John Geddie Editing by Stephen Coates and William Mallard)
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