A massive fire that has torn through several high-rise buildings in Hong Kong in the Tai Po area has claimed the life of at least 44 people.
It is heard that not all the residents managed to get out of the building and the police state that 279 people are still missing.
Over 760 firefighters were put into action to work on the fire on Wednesday afternoon with photographs of flames and clouds of grey smoke that were smoking out of the towers capturing the skyline of the city.
Local media reports have also stated that three men have since been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter in relation to the fire and an investigation has now been begun.
The fire erupted at the Wang Fuk Court of complex at 14:51 local time (06:51 GMT) and was declared as a level five – the worst level by fire department at 18:22.
The reason is not known, but the fire is thought to have swept quite fast due to the use of bamboo scaffoldings within the exterior of the buildings that were undergoing renovations.
There are 45 patients in a critical state among the ranks of the hospitalised. Injuries they had were taken to hospitals in other districts.
One of the victims of the fire was a 37-year old firefighter Ho Wai-ho. He had been discovered lying in a collapsed condition upon the scene some 30 minutes after losing touch with him.
I wish to express my sincere regrets to the lost ones as well as my heart filled sympathies to the families and those injured. We will give you every opportunity we can assist, said he.
The heat of the fire, and loose materials that are unsafe have affected the rescue mission.
The temperature in the affected buildings is extremely high and thus it is very hard to enter inside the buildings and ascend using the staircases to do firefighting and rescue mission as depicted by Derek Armstrong Chan who is the deputy director of fire services.
The fire is still not extinguished and officials have reported that they did not know when this was to happen.
Wang Fuk Court was constructed in 1983 and consists of eight tower blocks that offer 1,984 apartments to around 4,600 residents, a government census found in 2021. The fire has hit seven of the towers.
Certain locals have reported to local media that the fire alarms failed to go off and when the lifts malfunctioned they had a hard time getting out. Most of the residents living at the Wang Fuk Court, as indicated by a local councillor, are old.
Blasts were being heard within the buildings on Wednesday night as well and fire hoses could hardly reach beyond the first 31 storey of the towers.
An early report on the fire revealed that the rapidity of the fire breaking out was not ordinary and to quote, the Hong Kong security secretary, Chris Tang told the local newspapers. This was accompanied by sealing windows using Polystyrene.
Close buildings have also been evacuated and there are various temporary shelters that have been set. One of the shelters, which was over the road adjacent to the housing complex, was considered unsafe because the fire was still burn and evacuees were taken to another one which was farther.
A temporary shelter officer informed the AFP news agency that they were not very sure of the number of individuals who had not been traced given that the residents had continued to trickle in late in the night to report to the officers on the missing relatives.
It has a big evacuation area outside the fire, roads are shut down and over 30 bus routes have been rerouted, according to the Transport Department in Hong Kong.
President Xi Jinping of China has sympathised with the victim and requested that all means should be used to extinguish the fire and reduce the losses according to state media.
Bamboo scaffold is also widely used in Hong Kong and was one of the last cities in the world to continue to use it in modern times.
In March according to the local media reports the government development bureau has been making attempts to phase it out, in favour of metal scaffolding on safety grounds.
Hong Kong has gone 17 years without any level five fire, the last one, when a building that had been built in 1962 Cornwall Court caught fire. In that fire, four individuals were murdered.
Styrofoam in buildings aggravated the fire: fire services chief
Fire directors Andy Yeung Yan-kin have announced that firefighters had found styrofoam in the structures burning and that, according to Yeung, it led to the fire spreading faster in the blocks as well as igniting the flats along the corridors.
The fire chief on top of this circumstances states that during the rescue, the ambulatory officers could only access the building by the ground, most of the floors being covered by this time in the first hours of Thursday.
Yeung adds that the number of floors being on fire was another big challenge encountered during the operation.
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