Authorities probe corruption and negligence in Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades
HONG KONG AP Hong Kong s deadliest fire in decades has raised questions about corruption and negligence in the renovations of the apartment complex where at least people died An intense fire broke out at Wang Fuk Court complex in Hong Kong s northern suburbs Wednesday afternoon with flames covering seven of eight of the towers The complex was home to chosen residents certain of whom had raised safety concerns about the renovations more than year before the fire Police on Wednesday arrested three men from a construction company on suspicion of manslaughter and gross negligence They are now out on bail Functionaries then arrested seven men and one woman ranging in age from to including scaffolding subcontractors directors of an engineering consultant company and project managers supervising the renovation in a corruption probe Police have not identified the company where the defendants worked but documents posted to the homeowners association s website established that the Prestige Construction Engineering Company was in charge of renovations Police have seized boxes of documents from the company where phones rang unanswered Thursday Executives also revealed they were scrutinizing the materials used both the netting on the scaffolding and the foam panels and their role in the blaze Residents detected safety issues a year before fire For almost a year several residents at the Wang Fuk Court complex had been raising safety concerns to Hong Kong functionaries about the construction netting being used in the renovation project according to documents reviewed by the AP specifically about the netting that covered the scaffolding Hong Kong s labor department in a announcement on Saturday certified they had received such complaints adding that leaders had carried out inspections of Wang Fuk Court s renovation project since July and had warned contractors multiple times via writing that they must ensure they met fire safety requirements The labor department stated they had reviewed the product quality certificate of the netting and that it was in line with standards Those very materials are now of great interest after preliminary investigations revealed the fire started on a lower-level scaffolding net of one of the buildings It then spread rapidly as the foam panels caught fire stated Chris Tang the city s secretary for defense Police also stated they had been looking at highly flammable foam panels The blaze ignited the foam panels causing the glass to shatter and leading to a swift intensification of the fire and its spread into the interior spaces Tang revealed Further first responders uncovered that various fire alarms in the complex which housed a great number of older people did not sound when tested stated Andy Yeung the director of Hong Kong Fire Services though he did not say how a great number of were not working or if others were Intense blaze took days to put out It took firefighters a day to bring the fire under control and it was not fully extinguished until Friday morning specific hours after it started Crews prioritized apartments from which they had received exigency calls during the blaze but were unable to reach in the hours that the fire burned out of control Derek Armstrong Chan a deputy director of Hong Kong Fire Services explained reporters Twelve firefighters were among the people injured in the blaze and one firefighter was killed Even two days after the fire began smoke continued to drift out of the charred skeletons of the buildings from the occasional flare-up More bodies may be identified While more bodies might be recovered agents reported crews have finished a search for anyone living trapped inside Bureaucrats explained Friday that they had concluded search and rescue operations and that they were trying to identify bodies out of a total of people who were unaccounted for Katy Lo a resident of Wang Fuk Court was not home when the fire started Wednesday She rushed back roughly an hour later to see that the blaze had spread to her building That s my home I still can t really believe what happened Lo noted on Friday as she registered for executive assistance for affected households This all still feels like a bad dream The dead included two Indonesian migrant workers the Indonesian foreign ministry noted Thursday About other movers from the country who were working as domestic helpers in the apartment complex remained missing Indonesian Consul General Yul Edison commented Friday The city lowered flags to half staff in mourning and Chief Executive John Lee led a three-minute silence Saturday from the governing body headquarters with leaders all dressed in black The fire was the deadliest in Hong Kong in decades A fire in a commercial building in Kowloon killed people A warehouse fire in killed people according to the South China Morning Post Researcher Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed to this review Source
