Hong Kong fire that engulfed apartments finally doused as death toll nears 130 with more arrests made

Hong Kong — The death toll from a fire that tore through a Hong Kong residential complex climbed to 128 on Friday as more bodies were found in the blackened towers, authorities said. Meanwhile, another eight people involved in the towers’ renovation were arrested.

Secretary for Security Chris Tang told reporters at the scene that the search for victims was continuing and the death toll could still rise. The fire at the Wang Fuk Court complex started Wednesday afternoon and was only fully extinguished Friday morning. Dozens of people, including firefighters, were injured in the blaze.

Firefighters were still combing through the high-rise complex apartment-by-apartment in a final attempt to find anyone alive after the massive fire engulfed seven of the complex’s eight towers in one of the city’s deadliest blazes ever recorded.

Crews were prioritizing apartments from which they had received more than two dozen calls for assistance during the blaze, but which they were unable to reach due to the intensity of the fire, Derek Armstrong Chan, a deputy director of Hong Kong Fire Services told reporters early Friday morning.

“Our firefighting operation is almost complete,” he said.

The fire started midafternoon Wednesday in one of the Wang Fuk Court complex’s eight towers, jumping rapidly from one to the next as bamboo scaffolding covered in netting, in place for renovations, caught ablaze until seven buildings were engulfed.

It took more than 1,000 firefighters some 24 hours to bring the five-alarm blaze under control, and almost two days later, smoke still continued to drift out of the charred skeletons of the buildings from the occasional flare-up.

The final search of the buildings was expected to be complete later Friday, at which point officials have said they will officially end the rescue phase of the operation at the complex in Tai Po district, a northern suburb near Hong Kong’s border with mainland China.

It was unclear how many people could be inside the buildings, which had almost 2,000 apartments and some 4,800 residents. Hong Kong leader John Lee said early Thursday morning that officials had not been able to make contact with 279 residents.

“We will endeavor to force entry into all the units of the seven blocks concerned so as to ensure that there is no other possible casualties,” Chan said.

He said an updated figure on the number of missing people could not be calculated until the search and rescue operation was complete.

The apartments from which a total of 25 unanswered rescue calls were received, which are being prioritized, were primarily on higher floors, where the fire was last extinguished, he said.

More than 70 people were injured in the blaze, including 11 firefighters, and about 900 people were housed in temporary shelters.

Most of the casualties were in the first two buildings to catch fire, Chan said.

Arrests amid investigation into the deadly blaze

The apartment complex housed 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 investigating possible corruption relating to the renovation project.

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 Thursday, three men, the directors and an engineering consultant of a construction company, were arrested 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 The Associated Press confirmed Prestige Construction & Engineering Company was in charge of renovations in the tower complex. Police have seized boxes of documents from the company, where phones rang unanswered Thursday.

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. There was also word on Friday that fire alarm systems in at least some of the buildings affected may not have been functioning properly.

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

Authorities planned immediate inspections of many housing estates 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.