The death toll from the Hong Kong city’s deadliest fire at a Tai Po estate that has reached 44 and about 280 are still unaccounted for, South China Morning Post reported.
Rescue work continues amid flames now retreating onto the upper floors of three of the residential blocks. As of 10 am, 68 people are in hospital, with 16 in a critical condition. Twenty-five are deemed serious cases.
Raging flames at four out of the seven blocks in Wang Fuk Court have been brought under control while the three others still have fires on the upper floors of their 31-storey structures. Full-scale rescue work is ongoing and victims are still being extracted from the buildings.
According to a preliminary investigation, officers discovered highly flammable styrofoam cloaking lift windows on every floor, which authorities said caused the fire to spread more rapidly within the blocks and ignite flats through the corridors. The mesh netting and sheeting used outside the buildings also did not meet fire safety standards, officials said on Wednesday night.
Three people, including two directors and a consultant of the contractor responsible for the renovation of the buildings, have been arrested for manslaughter. They allegedly used non-compliant materials in scaffolding nets and sealed windows with styrofoam, which sparked the tragedy as the highly flammable substances caused the
The fire was first reported at 2: 51pm on Wednesday and soon grew into an inferno, with huge plumes of dark smoke billowing high into the sky at the scene at Wang Fuk Court, and the flames quickly spreading to seven out of eight blocks in the estate.
Police said they received multiple reports of people trapped in the building where the blaze started, with a man and a woman reportedly unconscious and suffering from burns as being among the first victims.
Initial footage from the scene showed bamboo scaffolding outside several flats of the building rapidly bursting into spiraling flames, before being completely engulfed in multiple towering columns of fire. Burning sections of green scaffolding mesh fell to the ground. (with inputs from SCMP)
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