Residents who escaped HK blaze wonder what comes next
HONG KONG—It was just after 3 p.m. when William Li received the unusual call from his wife, who was at work, saying she’d heard from a friend that their building was on fire.
There were no alarms, no signs of smoke in his second floor apartment, and no burning smell to give a sense of urgency, so the 40-year-old office worker who was home on a day off decided to change from his pajamas before heading outside.
But when he opened his door eight minutes after his wife called, it was already too late to escape as he was immediately engulfed by thick, black smoke.
“Everything went black before my eyes,” he told The Associated Press (AP). “I thought to myself: I’m in serious trouble.”
That was just the beginning of Wednesday’s blaze at the Wang Fuk Court complex on the outskirts of Hong Kong. It would burn for more than 40 hours and engulf seven of the complex’s eight buildings before being finally extinguished on Friday morning, claiming the lives of at least 128 people with some 200 unaccounted for, making it Hong Kong’s deadliest fire since 1948.
Bamboo scaffolding
From Li’s apartment near ground zero where the fire broke out, the flames shot up bamboo scaffolding covered with nylon netting that had been erected for construction work. It ignited polystyrene panels that had been placed over windows and blew out the glass, allowing the blaze to spread inside. Winds helped the fire jump from building to building.
Authorities are investigating whether the netting covering the bamboo scaffolding, commonly used in Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia, met fire-safety requirements; why windows were covered with foam panels; and why fire alarms did not sound.
Already police have arrested three people—the directors of a construction company and an engineering consultant—and Hong Kong’s anticorruption authorities have arrested a further eight including scaffolding subcontractors, directors of an engineering consulting company and the renovation project managers.
‘New town’
The complex is in Tai Po, a market town that in the late 1970s was designated as a “new town,” with many high-rise apartments built. The district is now home to about 300,000 of the city’s 7.5 million population, a mix of affluent, middle-class and lower-income groups.
Li grew up in the Wang Fuk Court complex, while resident Ding Chan and her husband moved there as adults as soon as it was built in the early 1980s.
Chan had left her apartment a half hour before the fire broke out and was at work as a cleaner when she started receiving frantic calls from friends about the blaze.
“I did not believe it at first,” the 70-year-old told AP.
By the time she got back to the housing estate shortly after 3 p.m.—around the same time Li’s wife was calling him with her warning—she could see the flames already spreading quickly and it wasn’t long before it reached her own building, and there was nothing she could do but watch.
Her husband, I.N. Kong, who is also 70, was also fortunately not at home when the fire broke out.
But Chan, who juggles two jobs and often works six days a week, and her husband who works as an electrician, are now faced with having to rebuild their lives from scratch.
Their unit, which they spent more than a decade paying off, is likely uninhabitable now and Chan said they did not know how they were going to survive for the next months, let alone the longer term future.
Emergency assistance
They have been put up temporarily in a local hotel, but don’t know what comes next.
“I haven’t slept for two nights,” she said. “Where am I going to stay?”
The government has made emergency assistance available to residents, and donations have also been pouring in, but it was not yet clear what long-term financial aid those in need will receive.
Of the more than 4,600 residents in Wang Fuk Court, more than one-third are over 65, like Chan and her husband, according to Midland Realty data based on the 2021 census.
Some 900 people were taken to emergency shelters in the immediate aftermath of the fire, and hundreds of volunteers, including off-duty nurses, social workers and psychological counselors, flocked to the district to offer help.
Li took to social media to share his ordeal, posting details on Friday on a Tai Po Facebook group, writing he hoped to help the community “heal and rebuild together.” By Saturday morning it has generated more than 1,000 comments and had been shared nearly 10,000 times.
After being blasted by smoke when he first tried to venture into the hallway, Li, quickly retreated back into his apartment.
He described hearing explosions, and a photo he snapped shows his room illuminated by the glow of flames outside the window. He told AP he thought of jumping from his second floor unit, but instead decided to wait for rescue.
He called police to report the predicament, put wet towels down to block smoke coming in from under his door and called his wife to tell her he couldn’t get out.
“Everyone told me to wait,” he said.
Voices from the hall
Hearing voices from the hall, he decided to brave the smoke and went into the corridor where he found two bewildered neighbors who were trying to escape, and led them back to shelter in his apartment.
“They told their window had overheated and shattered from the fire and the fire rushed into their home.”
He began to worry his apartment would soon suffer the same fate.
“That was the moment I began to feel death was very close to me,” he said. “I was terrified, helpless, because I knew my escape route, the doorway, was no longer safe. In that instant I felt powerless, as if there was nothing I could do except wait.”
Not sure what else to do, the father of two reached out to friends for comfort.
“I started telling my friends to help take care of my family,” he said. “I felt like I was facing the end of my life.”
His mother, who lives in Britain, called in panic. “I could only tell her not to worry,” he said.
In the end, help arrived before the flames.
At around 5 p.m., about two hours after his wife called to warn him, firefighters got a ladder to the scaffolding outside his window.
