HK fire toll rises to 159 as authorities arrest six
Death toll in high-rise apartment fire in Hong Kong rises to 159; authorities arrested six people on suspicion of disabling some fire alarms during maintenance work at the residential complex.
The youngest person killed in the fire was one year old, police said. The oldest was 97 years old.
Police said they had completed the search for bodies in seven of the eight high-rise residential towers destroyed by a fire that first broke out a week ago and took more than 40 hours to extinguish.
Approximately 30 people are still reported missing.
“We’re not done yet,” Police Commissioner Joe Chow told reporters. he said, adding that authorities had found suspicious human bones in different apartments and would conduct DNA tests to identify them.
Authorities also said they will continue to search piles of fallen bamboo scaffolding to check if any remains or bodies are buried there.
The fatal fire broke out at Wang Fuk Court in the northern suburban district of Tai Po, which is under a months-long renovation project with buildings covered in bamboo scaffolding and green netting.
The city’s anti-corruption unit and police said they arrested 15 people, including executives of construction companies, as authorities investigated corruption and negligence related to renovation work.
Six more people from a fire installation contractor were arrested, police said.
According to police, they are believed to have disabled some fire alarms in the residential complex during renovations and are suspected of making false statements to the fire department.
Wang Fuk Courthouse residents and officials have previously said some fire alarms in buildings did not go off when the fire broke out, but it was not immediately clear how widespread the problem was within the complex.
Officials also noted substandard plastic nylon netting covering scaffolding erected outside the towers at Wang Fuk Court and foam sheets installed on windows, which contributed to the rapid spread of the fire to seven of the eight buildings in the complex.
Government officials on Wednesday ordered the removal of all external scaffolding netting from hundreds of buildings across the city undergoing major renovations or maintenance. Materials will need to be tested before being allowed to be reassembled.
Hong Kong Security Minister Chris Tang said the removal was triggered by initial findings at two residential complexes in the area where fire safety inspection reports for scaffolding networks were suspected to be fake.
Police are investigating companies they believe could provide the test reports, including the Binzhou Inspection and Testing Center in China.
The initial cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Police said 19 of the 159 bodies are still unidentified.
Among the dead were ten immigrants who worked as domestic help in the housing complex, nine from Indonesia and one from the Philippines, and a firefighter.
