Death toll rises to 128 in Hong Kong residential fire

Hong Kong fire­fight­ers found dozens more bod­ies Fri­day in an in­ten­sive apart­ment-by-apart­ment search of a high-rise com­plex where a mas­sive fire en­gulfed sev­en build­ings, and au­thor­i­ties ar­rest­ed an­oth­er 8 peo­ple in­volved in the tow­ers’ ren­o­va­tion. The death toll in one of the city’s dead­liest blazes rose to 128, and many re­main un­ac­count­ed for.

First re­spon­ders found that some fire alarms in the com­plex, which housed many old­er peo­ple, did not sound when test­ed, said Andy Ye­ung, the di­rec­tor of Hong Kong Fire Ser­vices, though he did not say how many were not work­ing or if oth­ers were.

The blaze jumped rapid­ly from one build­ing to the next as foam pan­els and bam­boo scaf­fold­ing cov­ered in net­ting ap­par­ent­ly in­stalled by a con­struc­tion com­pa­ny caught fire.

Au­thor­i­ties on Fri­day ar­rest­ed sev­en men and one woman, rang­ing in age from 40 to 63, in­clud­ing scaf­fold­ing sub­con­trac­tors, di­rec­tors of an en­gi­neer­ing con­sul­tant com­pa­ny and project man­agers su­per­vis­ing the ren­o­va­tion, the In­de­pen­dent Com­mis­sion Against Cor­rup­tion said in a state­ment.

On Fri­day, crews pri­or­i­tized apart­ments from which they had re­ceived emer­gency calls dur­ing the blaze but were un­able to reach in the hours that the fire burned out of con­trol, Derek Arm­strong Chan, a deputy di­rec­tor of Hong Kong Fire Ser­vices, told re­porters. It took fire­fight­ers a day to bring the fire un­der con­trol, and it was not ful­ly ex­tin­guished un­til Fri­day morn­ing — some 40 hours af­ter it start­ed.

Even two days af­ter the fire be­gan, smoke con­tin­ued to drift out of the charred skele­tons of the build­ings from the oc­ca­sion­al flare-up.

More bod­ies may be found

Some 200 peo­ple re­main un­ac­count­ed for, Sec­re­tary for Se­cu­ri­ty Chris Tang told re­porters. That in­cludes 89 bod­ies that have not yet been iden­ti­fied. Yet more bod­ies might be re­cov­ered, au­thor­i­ties said, though crews have fin­ished a search for any­one liv­ing trapped in­side.

More than 2,300 fire­fight­ers and med­ical per­son­nel were in­volved in the op­er­a­tion, and 12 fire­fight­ers were among the 79 peo­ple in­jured, Ye­ung said. One fire­fight­er was al­so killed, he had said pre­vi­ous­ly.

Katy Lo, 70, a res­i­dent of Wang Fuk Court, was not home when the fire start­ed Wednes­day. She rushed back rough­ly an hour lat­er to see that the blaze had spread to her build­ing.

“That’s my home.… I still can’t re­al­ly be­lieve what hap­pened,” Lo said on Fri­day as she reg­is­tered for gov­ern­ment as­sis­tance for af­fect­ed house­holds. “This all still feels like a bad dream.”

The gov­ern­ment said all of­fi­cial flags in the city will be low­ered to half staff in mourn­ing from Sat­ur­day to Mon­day. The city’s leader, John Lee, will lead a three-minute si­lence Sat­ur­day from the gov­ern­ment head­quar­ters.

The apart­ment com­plex of eight, 31-sto­ry build­ings in Tai Po dis­trict, a sub­urb near Hong Kong’s bor­der with main­land Chi­na, was built in the 1980s and had been un­der­go­ing a ma­jor ren­o­va­tion. It had al­most 2,000 apart­ments and some 4,800 res­i­dents.

High­ly flam­ma­ble foam pan­els blamed

Three men — the di­rec­tors and an en­gi­neer­ing con­sul­tant of a con­struc­tion com­pa­ny — were ar­rest­ed Thurs­day on sus­pi­cion of manslaugh­ter, and po­lice said com­pa­ny lead­ers were sus­pect­ed of gross neg­li­gence.

Po­lice have not iden­ti­fied the com­pa­ny where the sus­pects worked, but doc­u­ments post­ed to the home­own­ers as­so­ci­a­tion’s web­site showed that the Pres­tige Con­struc­tion & En­gi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny was in charge of ren­o­va­tions. Po­lice have seized box­es of doc­u­ments from the com­pa­ny, where phones rang unan­swered Thurs­day.

In ad­di­tion to the new ar­rests Fri­day, the an­ti-cor­rup­tion agency al­so searched the sus­pects’ of­fices and seized rel­e­vant doc­u­ments and bank records.

Po­lice said they found high­ly flam­ma­ble plas­tic foam pan­els at­tached to the win­dows on each floor of the one un­af­fect­ed tow­er. The pan­els were be­lieved to have been in­stalled by the con­struc­tion com­pa­ny but the pur­pose was not clear.

Pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions showed the fire start­ed on a low­er-lev­el scaf­fold­ing net of one of the build­ings, and then spread rapid­ly as the foam pan­els caught fire, said Tang, the sec­re­tary for se­cu­ri­ty.

“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 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.

Au­thor­i­ties planned im­me­di­ate in­spec­tions of hous­ing com­plex­es un­der­go­ing ma­jor ren­o­va­tions to en­sure scaf­fold­ing and con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als meet safe­ty stan­dards.

The fire was the dead­liest in Hong Kong in decades. A 1996 fire in a com­mer­cial build­ing in Kowloon killed 41 peo­ple. A ware­house fire in 1948 killed 176 peo­ple, ac­cord­ing to the South Chi­na Morn­ing Post.