Grief and anger swept through the northern Hong Kong district of Tai Po after a devastating blaze ripped through the Wang Fuk Court housing complex over Wednesday and Thursday, November 26-27, claiming at more than 50 lives and leaving nearly 300 residents untraced.
While firefighters fought for over a day to control the inferno that engulfed seven of the complex’s 32-storey towers, police pointed fingers at a construction firm, calling its actions “grossly negligent”, after the fire apparently started from a bamboo scaffolding being used during renovation work.
Away from the facts of the investigation and the official response, the tragedy unfolded also in the voices of the residents who narrowly escaped, or who were now searching desperately for loved ones amid the rubble and smoke.
For many residents of the tightly packed complex that houses more than 4,600 people — it’s part of subsidised housing for Hong Kong’s middle class — the pace and intensity of the fire turned escape routes into death traps.
‘She had to go back to the flat’
Lawrence Lee spent the night waiting for news of his wife. He shared the horrifying account of her attempted escape.
“When the fire started, I told her on the phone to escape,” he recounted while waiting at a shelter. “But once she left the flat, the corridor and stairs were all filled with smoke and it was all dark, so she had no choice but to go back to the flat,” he said.
Another distraught woman, identified only by her surname Ng, 52, was searching for her daughter outside a shelter, carrying the daughter’s graduation photograph. “She and her father are still not out yet,” Ng said, adding bitterly, “They didn’t have water to save our building.”
Authorities reported that 900 residents were housed in eight shelters following the evacuation.
‘What’s left?’
The sheer scale of loss — both life and property — has been particularly agonising for long-time residents.
Harry Cheung, 66, a resident of Block Two for over 40 years, said he heard a loud noise around 2:45 pm, Wednesday, and saw fire erupting in a nearby block. He rushed back into his flat to grab essential items. “I don’t even know how I feel right now. I’m just thinking about where I’m going to sleep tonight,” he said.
Wan, 51, mourned the destruction of his family’s history: “We bought in this building more than 20 years ago. All of our belongings were in this building, and now that it has all burned like this, what’s left?”
Others described the terror during evacuation. Winter Chung, 75, who lived in one of the towers, recalled seeing sparks flying around the complex as he fled on Wednesday afternoon. Despite reaching safety, the anxiety was consuming. “I couldn’t sleep the entire night,” Winter Chung told the news agency AP on Thursday.
‘27th floor, room 1: He is dead’
Another long-time resident, identified as Chu, 70, spent Wednesday night at a friend’s house. He returned only to see her home still burning. She said she’s been unable to contact friends who lived in the next block: “We don’t know what to do.”
The desperate search for the missing is being done through an online app, linked to a Google document, detailing residents of individual towers.
The entries paint a stark picture of the catastrophe, including descriptions such as, “Mother-in-law in her 70s, missing”, or “one boy and one girl”.
Chillingly, there was one that read: “27th floor, room 1: He is dead.”
Deadliest fire since 1948
The Wang Fuk Court fire is now Hong Kong’s deadliest fire since 1948, when 176 people were killed in a warehouse blaze.
The high temperatures and thick smoke challenged the more than 1,200 firefighters and 304 fire engines battling the blaze.
Officials confirmed that 62 people were sent to hospitals, with 17 in critical condition as of Thursday morning. A firefighter was among the dead, and two Indonesian migrant workers were also killed.
Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee acknowledged the need for support and a thorough investigation. China’s President Xi Jinping urged an “all-out effort” to minimise casualties and losses.
The tragedy also prompted comparisons with London’s Grenfell Tower inferno, which killed 72 people in 2017. That fire was similarly blamed on the installation of flammable cladding. The Grenfell United survivors’ group expressed solidarity with the Hong Kong victims: “To the families, friends and communities, we stand with you. You are not alone.”
