DEVASTATING images from inside the charred shells of Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court have laid bare the scale of destruction for the first time.
Last week’s inferno has now left at least 146 dead and more than 100 people still unaccounted for.
In the photos, members of the Hong Kong Police Force Disaster Victim Identification Unit (DVIU) pick their way through rooms that have been reduced to blackened cavities.
Walls are scorched to charcoal, doors hang like melted sheets and steel bedframes are twisted into skeletal shapes.
Pools of water from days of firefighting also glisten across ashen floors.
Meanwhile, officers in white coveralls and hard hats crouch beneath blown-out windows, their gloved hands sifting debris where entire apartments once stood.
More on the hong kong fire
Police say bodies have been found in apartments, stairwells and even on rooftops as residents tried desperately to escape the flames.
Cheng Ka-chun, who heads the Disaster Victim Identification Unit, said the darkness inside the towers has slowed the search, the New York Post reports.
“It is so dark inside, and because of the low light, it is very difficult to do the work, especially in places away from the windows,” he told reporters, still wearing his white coveralls with a hard hat and respiratory mask at his side.
So far, his team has examined four of the seven ravaged blocks.
Around 100 people remain unaccounted for and 79 injured, said Tsang Shuk-yin, who leads the casualty unit.
Senior police official Amy Lam warned the last towers to be searched are “the difficult ones” and the final sweep may take weeks.
Investigators say the blaze erupted Wednesday on lower-level scaffolding netting before racing upwards.
Renovation work had wrapped the eight 31-storey buildings in bamboo scaffolding and flammable foam-panel window coverings.
Winds carried the flames from block to block until seven of the eight towers were engulfed.
Wang Fuk Court was home to more than 4,600 residents, many of which elderly.
Fire alarms in parts of the complex failed when tested, said Fire Services director Andy Yeung.
Officials say 146 bodies have now been found, bumping the death told up from the previously reported 128.
Dozens still remain unaccounted for, with hundreds of displaced residents now in temporary shelters, hostels or hotels.
Authorities have suspended work on 28 other projects run by the same contractor, Prestige Construction & Engineering Company, pending safety audits.
The government said the disaster “exposed serious deficiencies of PC&E in site safety management, including the extensive use of foam boards to block up windows during building repairs.”
Three men – two company directors and an engineering consultant – were initially arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.
They were later rearrested by anti-corruption authorities, along with eight more suspects including scaffolding subcontractors and renovation managers.
Police say company leaders are suspected of gross negligence.
Survivors recall their horror escape
by Juliana Cruz Lima, Foreign News Reporter
SURVIVORS of Hong Kong’s worst fire in more than half a century say they escaped only by luck and instinct in total darkness, choking in smoke and with no alarms.
More than 900 residents have been driven into shelters, many with nothing but the clothes they were wearing as the Wang Fuk Court complex turned into a towering furnace.
Resident Lawrence Lee spent the night at a shelter awaiting news of his wife.
He told the Associated Press: “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.”
She turned back, and he hasn’t heard from her since.
Another survivor known as Wan told CNN he spent half an hour unaware the blaze was spreading toward his eighth-floor flat.
Only the sound of people screaming made him check the window.
“The instant I opened the window, I saw the smoke,” he said.
He grabbed his two dogs and wallet and bolted, recalling that the stairwell “smelled of gas”.
Only minutes later the fire was raised to a level 4 alarm – then to level 5, the city’s highest, by early evening.
“There’s no home to go back to,” he added.
“We have nothing, not even clothes.”
Residents later said alarms didn’t ring in multiple blocks.
Some reported no knock on the door, and no instruction to flee.
