Firefighters in Hong Kong are working for a second day to put out a large blaze at a residential complex that has killed at least 65 people in the Chinese territory’s deadliest and most destructive fire in 60 years.
Officials said on Thursday that flames in four buildings in the Wang Fuk Court housing complex, located in the Tai Po neighbourhood, had been extinguished and fires in the rest of the site were under control.
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But rescuers are still racing to reach people feared trapped on the upper floors of the complex, where at least 279 people are unaccounted for.
Resident Lawrence Lee said he still had not heard from his wife, who he believes is 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.
The death toll from the disaster stands at 65, including one firefighter, according to the Hong Kong Fire Services Department. More than 70 people have been injured, according to the Hospital Authority, many suffering from burns and smoke inhalation.
Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu, reporting from Beijing, said people in mainland China “have been watching aghast” as the tragedy unfolds.
“I think many people in China feel a lot of sympathy and empathy for those who are affected. Hundreds of millions of them live in dense urban settings, in high-rise buildings not unlike those that caught fire in Hong Kong’s Tai Po district,” Yu said.
Construction directors arrested on suspicion of manslaughter
The blaze began midafternoon on Wednesday on bamboo scaffolding and construction netting and then spread across seven buildings in the complex.
Authorities suspected some materials on the exterior walls of the high-rise buildings did not meet fire resistance standards and led to 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.
Three men from a construction company handling maintenance at the site have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter. The men – company directors and an engineering consultant – were suspected of being “grossly negligent”, said Eileen Chung, a senior superintendent of police.
Amid the construction safety concerns, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee said all housing estates undergoing major improvements will be immediately inspected, and he announced plans to phase out bamboo scaffolding.
Alex Webb, a fire safety engineer at CSIRO Infrastructure Technologies in Australia, said the disaster “is quite shocking” because 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,” Webb said.
‘Seriously review fire safety’
Analysts said public anger could be directed towards the government’s building and fire safety regulators.
“I believe we need to seriously review fire safety and site safety management across the entire industry, including government oversight,” said Chau Sze Kit, chairman of the Hong Kong Construction Industry Employees General Union.
The housing complex contains nearly 2,000 apartments for about 4,800 residents, including many older people who may have struggled to evacuate quickly.
It was built in the 1980s and had been undergoing a major renovation project, which Hong Kong’s anticorruption agency said it will investigate for possible corruption.
Lee said the government would set up a HK$300m (US$38.6m) fund to help residents.
Numerous Chinese companies and groups – including Xiaomi, Xpeng and Geely as well as the charity foundation of Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma – have pledged millions in donations to the fire victims.
