At least 13 dead as fire engulfs Hong Kong high-rise residential buildings

At least 13 peo­ple have been killed in a fire that has en­gulfed sev­er­al high-rise apart­ment build­ings in Hong Kong, au­thor­i­ties say, with some res­i­dents re­port­ed trapped in­side.

Flames took hold in sev­er­al apart­ment blocks of the Wang Fuk Court es­tate in Tai Po, a dis­trict in the north­ern part of the city, on Wednes­day af­ter­noon be­fore en­gulf­ing oth­er parts of the build­ings.

Fire­fight­ers bat­tled the blaze in­to the night as thick, black smoke bil­lowed from the 31-storey tow­ers and or­ange flames lit up the sky.

Nine peo­ple were de­clared dead at the scene and four sent to hos­pi­tal were lat­er con­firmed dead, said the Fire Ser­vices De­part­ment, which up­grad­ed the blaze to a lev­el five alarm – the high­est lev­el – af­ter night­fall.

At least 15 peo­ple were in­jured, and lo­cal me­dia re­port­ed that some res­i­dents were be­lieved to be trapped in­side the build­ings.

Chan Derek Arm­strong, deputy di­rec­tor of Hong Kong’s Fire Ser­vices De­part­ment, told re­porters that the fire spread rapid­ly and au­thor­i­ties re­ceived nu­mer­ous calls for help from res­i­dents.

“De­bris and scaf­fold­ing of the af­fect­ed build­ings are falling down, so [that pos­es] ad­di­tion­al dan­ger to our front­line per­son­nel,” he said, adding that the tem­per­a­ture in­side the build­ings re­mained very high.

“It’s quite dif­fi­cult for us to en­ter the build­ings and go up­stairs to con­duct fire­fight­ing and res­cue op­er­a­tions,” he said.

‘Peo­ple trapped in­side’

“There’s noth­ing that can be done about the prop­er­ty. We can on­ly hope that every­one, no mat­ter old or young, can re­turn safe­ly,” a Tai Po res­i­dent sur­named So, 57, told the AFP news agency near the scene of the fire.

“It’s heart­break­ing. We’re wor­ried there are peo­ple trapped in­side.”

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Re­port­ing from the scene of the blaze, jour­nal­ist Lau­ra West­brook told Al Jazeera that when the fire start­ed, it spread through the bam­boo scaf­fold­ing to oth­er blocks in the hous­ing es­tate.

“As I’ve been stand­ing here, I can smell the smoke and oc­ca­sion­al­ly we hear these pops, as some of the de­bris falls to the ground,” West­brook said.

Wang Fuk Court is one of many high-rise hous­ing com­plex­es in Hong Kong, a city that is one of the most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas in the world.

Har­ry Che­ung, 66, who has lived at Block Two in one of the com­plex­es for more than 40 years, said he heard “a very loud noise” at around 2:45pm lo­cal time (06:45 GMT) and saw a fire erupt in a near­by block.

“I im­me­di­ate­ly went back to pack up my things,” he told the Reuters news agency. “I don’t even know how I feel right now. I’m just think­ing about where I’m go­ing to sleep tonight be­cause I prob­a­bly won’t be able to go back home.”

Bam­boo scaf­fold­ing

Peo­ple gath­ered on a near­by over­head walk­way, watch­ing in dis­may and tak­ing pic­tures as smoke bil­lowed from the build­ings.

Some of the struc­tures were clad in bam­boo scaf­fold­ing, with so­cial me­dia posts from res­i­dents say­ing the units had been un­der ren­o­va­tion for around a year.

Frames of scaf­fold­ing were seen tum­bling to the ground as fire­fight­ers bat­tled the blaze, while scores of fire en­gines and am­bu­lances lined the road be­low the de­vel­op­ment, wit­ness­es told Reuters.

Fire­fight­ers de­ployed 128 fire trucks and 57 am­bu­lances to the scene.

Au­thor­i­ties set up a ca­su­al­ty hot­line and opened two tem­po­rary shel­ters in near­by com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres for evac­u­at­ed res­i­dents. Sec­tions of a near­by high­way al­so were closed by the fire­fight­ing op­er­a­tion.

“Res­i­dents near­by are ad­vised to stay in­doors, close their doors and win­dows, and stay calm,” the Fire Ser­vices De­part­ment said. “Mem­bers of the pub­lic are al­so ad­vised to avoid go­ing to the area af­fect­ed by the fire.”

Tai Po, lo­cat­ed near the bor­der with main­land Chi­na, is an es­tab­lished sub­ur­ban dis­trict with a pop­u­la­tion of about 300,000 peo­ple. Records show the hous­ing com­plex con­sist­ed of eight blocks with al­most 2,000 apart­ments hous­ing about 4,800 peo­ple.

By Al Jazeera Staff and News Agen­cies