Eight More Arrested In Hong Kong Apartment Blaze As Death Toll Climbs To 128

Hong Kong firefighters discovered dozens more bodies on Friday as they continued their slow, apartment-by-apartment search of a high-rise housing complex devastated by a massive blaze earlier this week. With these latest recoveries, the death toll has risen to 128, making it one of the city’s deadliest fires in decades. Many residents are still missing.

Authorities also arrested eight more people linked to the ongoing renovation of the building cluster. Those detained include scaffolding subcontractors, project managers and directors of an engineering consultancy, according to the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Officials say the rescue teams found worrying signs inside the buildings. Some fire alarms did not sound when tested, said

Andy Yeung, director of Hong Kong Fire Services, though he did not specify how many systems failed.

The blaze, which engulfed seven out of eight towers in the Tai Po complex, spread with unusual speed. Foam insulation panels and bamboo scaffolding wrapped in construction netting — materials apparently installed by a renovation contractor — caught fire and helped the flames leap quickly from one building to the next.

Derek Armstrong Chan, a deputy director of Fire Services, said teams focused on flats where emergency calls had been made but rescuers could not reach in time while the fire burned out of control. It took firefighters nearly a full day to contain the blaze, and it was not fully put out until Friday morning, almost 40 hours after it began. Smoke was still drifting from the charred towers two days later.

Security Secretary Chris Tang said around 200 people remained unaccounted for, including 89 bodies that had not yet been identified. Officials warned more victims might still be found, although the search for survivors trapped inside has ended.

More than 2,300 firefighters and medical staff took part in the operation. Twelve firefighters were among the 79 people injured, and one firefighter died earlier in the rescue effort.

Many residents are struggling to process the destruction.

Katy Lo, 70, who lived in Wang Fuk Court, said she rushed home after hearing about the fire but found her building already engulfed.

“That’s my home. I still can’t really believe what happened… This all still feels like a bad dream,” she said as she signed up for government assistance.

The victims included two Indonesian migrant workers. Eleven more Indonesian domestic helpers who lived or worked in the complex are still missing, Consul General Yul Edison said.

Hong Kong will lower all official flags to half-mast from Saturday to Monday. Chief Executive John Lee will lead three minutes of silence on Saturday.

The apartment complex — eight towers of 31 storeys each — was built in the 1980s and was undergoing major renovation. Nearly 2,000 flats and 4,800 residents were housed there.

Police have arrested several people from the construction company responsible for the works. Documents on the homeowners association’s website identified the firm as Prestige Construction & Engineering Company. Police seized boxes of records from its office this week.

Investigators say highly flammable plastic foam panels were fixed to window areas across the buildings. These materials, along with large sections of exterior scaffolding wrapped in netting, allowed the fire to spread rapidly.

“The blaze ignited the foam panels, causing the glass to shatter and leading to a swift intensification of the fire and its spread into the interior spaces,” Tang said.

Authorities now believe some materials used in the renovation did not meet fire-safety standards. City officials plan immediate inspections of other housing estates under refurbishment.

This blaze is the worst in Hong Kong in decades. The last major fire of similar scale occurred in 1996, when 41 people died in Kowloon. An even earlier warehouse fire in 1948 killed 176 people.