HONG KONG (AP) — Firefighters battled a blaze at a high-rise residential complex in Hong Kong for the second day on Thursday, as the death toll rose to 65 in one of the deadliest blazes in the city's modern
history.
Thick smoke continued to pour out of some apartments in the Wang Fuk Court complex, a dense cluster of high-rise towers housing thousands of people in Tai Po district, a northern suburb near Hong Kong's border with the mainland. Flames could still be seen inside the buildings Thursday evening.
Hong Kong leader John Lee said contact had been lost with 279 people earlier Thursday. Rescues were continuing in some of the towers, but authorities did not provide updates on the missing or how many were still trapped inside the ravaged buildings Thursday during a press conference.
Firefighters have been trying to control the flames since midafternoon Wednesday, when the fire started in bamboo scaffolding and construction netting and then spread across seven of the complex’s eight buildings. Fires in four buildings had been effectively put out, with the remaining three towers under control, authorities said Thursday afternoon.
One firefighter was among the dead, and 70 people were injured, authorities said. About 900 people were evacuated to temporary shelters overnight.
Resident Lawrence Lee was waiting for news about his wife, who he believed was still trapped in their apartment.
“When the fire started, I told her on the phone to escape. But once she left the flat, the corridor and stairs were all filled with smoke and it was all dark, so she had no choice but to go back to the flat,” he said, as he waited in one of the shelters overnight.
Winter and Sandy Chung, who lived in one of the towers, said they saw sparks fly around as they evacuated Wednesday afternoon. Although they were safe, they were worried about their home. “I couldn’t sleep the entire night,” Winter Chung, 75, told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Three men, the directors and an engineering consultant of a construction company, were arrested on suspicion of manslaughter. Police have not directly named the company where they work.
"We have reason to believe that those in charge of the construction company were grossly negligent,” said Eileen Chung, a senior superintendent of police.
Police on Thursday also searched the office of Prestige Construction & Engineering Company, which the AP confirmed was in charge of renovations in the tower complex. Police seized boxes of documents as evidence, according to local media. Phones for Prestige rang unanswered.
Authorities suspected some materials on the exterior walls of the high-rise buildings did not meet fire resistance standards, allowing the unusually fast spread of the fire.
Police also said they found Styrofoam -- which is highly flammable -- attached to the windows on each floor near the elevator lobby of the one unaffected tower. It was believed to have been installed by the construction company but the purpose was not clear. Secretary for Security Chris Tang said they would investigate the materials further.
The housing complex consisted of eight buildings with almost 2,000 apartments for about 4,800 residents, including many older people. It was built in the 1980s and had been undergoing a major renovation. Hong Kong's anti-corruption agency said on Thursday it was launching a probe into possible corruption relating to the renovation project.
The fire started on the external scaffolding of a 32-story tower, then spread on the bamboo scaffolding and construction netting to the inside of the building and then to the other buildings, likely aided by windy conditions.
Bamboo scaffolding is a common sight in Hong Kong at building construction and renovation projects, though the government said earlier this year that it would start phasing it out for public projects because of safety concerns.
A fire safety expert said the incident “is quite shocking,” as regulations generally require buildings to be spaced apart to keep fires from spreading from one building to the next. “Typically, they don’t spread beyond the building of origin,” said Alex Webb, a fire safety engineer at CSIRO Infrastructure Technologies in Australia, saying the materials police cited could explain why the fires spread.
Lee said on Thursday that officials will hold talks with industry stakeholders on plans to replace bamboo scaffolding across the city with metal. Authorities will also be carrying out immediate inspections of all housing estates that are undergoing major renovation work to ensure scaffolding and construction materials meet safety standards.
The fire was the deadliest in Hong Kong in decades. In November 1996, 41 people died in a commercial building in Kowloon in a fire that lasted for around 20 hours.
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Wu reported from Bangkok. Researcher Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed to this report.
