Hong Kong Firefighters Make Final Search For Survivors After High-Rise Fire Kills 128

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong firefighters searched apartment after apartment at a high-rise tower complex on Friday for more victims after a big fire In one of the city’s deadliest fires, seven out of eight buildings were flooded and at least 128 people died.

Crews were prioritizing apartments where they had received more than two dozen calls for help. during fire Derek Armstrong Chan, deputy director of the Hong Kong Fire Service, told reporters but they could not be reached.

The death toll rose to 128 on Friday afternoon after more bodies were found in the blackened towers, and Security Minister Chris Tang told reporters at the scene that the search for victims was continuing and the numbers could still rise.

The fire started in one of the eight towers of the Wang Fuk Court complex on Wednesday afternoon and quickly spread from one to the other. bamboo scaffolding The building, which was covered with netting for renovations, went up in flames until seven buildings were engulfed.

It took more than 1,000 firefighters nearly 24 hours to bring the blaze under control, and almost two days later smoke continued to rise from the charred skeletons of the buildings from sporadic flare-ups.

The final search of the buildings was expected to be completed late Friday, at which point authorities said they would officially end the recovery phase of their operations at the complex in the Tai Po district, a northern suburb of Hong Kong near the border with mainland China.

It was unclear how many people might be in the buildings, which have about 2,000 apartments and about 4,800 residents.

“We will attempt to forcibly enter all units of the seven blocks involved to ensure there are no further possible casualties,” Chan said.

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

It was stated that a total of 25 unanswered rescue calls were received and the prioritized apartments were primarily on the upper floors where the fire was last extinguished.

More than 70 people, including 11 firefighters, were injured in the fire and approximately 900 people were placed in temporary shelters.

Most of the casualties were in the first two buildings that caught fire, Chan said.

apartment complex It contained many elderly people. It was built in the 1980s and is undergoing major renovations. Hong Kong’s anti-corruption agency said on Thursday it was investigating possible corruption related to the renovation project.

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

Police did not identify the company the suspects worked for, but The Associated Press confirmed that Prestige Construction and Engineering Company was responsible for renovations at the tower complex. Police seized boxes of documents from the company, whose phones went unanswered on Thursday.

Authorities suspected that some materials on the exterior walls of high-rise buildings did not meet fire resistance standards, causing the fire to spread unusually quickly.

Police said they also found highly flammable plastic foam panels affixed to the windows of each floor near the elevator lobby of the only unaffected tower. The panels were thought to have been installed by the construction company, but their purpose was unclear.

Authorities planned urgent inspections of housing estates undergoing major renovations to ensure scaffolding and construction materials met safety standards.

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

Researcher Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed to this report.

This story prompted a fire official’s name to be corrected to Derek Armstrong Chan, not Wong Ka Wing.