{"id":599710,"date":"2025-11-28T18:23:22","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T18:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/599710\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T18:23:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T18:23:22","slug":"we-cant-get-any-answers-grief-and-anger-in-hong-kong-after-deadly-high-rise-fire-hong-kong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/599710\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We can\u2019t get any answers\u2019: grief and anger in Hong Kong after deadly high-rise fire | Hong Kong"},"content":{"rendered":"

For almost 48 hours, Mr Lau had been calling his cousin. On Wednesday afternoon Lau was at his home nearby, when he saw smoke from Mei Lan\u2019s building. Mei Lan, her husband, and their children live in the Wang Fuk Court high-rise apartment complex in northern Hong Kong<\/a>. Shortly after lunchtime on Wednesday, a fire started in one of its eight high-rise towers, and quickly spread to six others. It burned for more than two days, killing at least 128 people \u2013 a number certain to rise.<\/p>\n

The inferno has been compared to London\u2019s Grenfell Tower disaster. Not just for the scale, but for the now rampant questions about negligent safety standards and corruption, amid revelations that the construction site had been inspected 16 times for safety concerns and allegedly had a history of violations.<\/p>\n

Late on Friday, Mei Lan still was not answering Lau\u2019s calls. The phone just rang and rang.<\/p>\n

Mr Lau was calling his cousin Mei Lan trying to reach her. The phone just rang and rang. Photograph: Helen Davidson\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m worried she might have fainted from the heat and can\u2019t hear [the phone],\u201d Lau told the Guardian. \u201cPeople have died now; of course I hope she can make it out, but there is no contact. I\u2019m worried, of course, I feel awful. The whole family, five or six people, is missing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officially, Mei Lan and her family were among the 200 or so people unaccounted for, including 89 bodies that could not be visually identified. Lau was accompanied by two friends, and the three elderly men were keeping each other upbeat and optimistic, fielding calls from other friends and relatives.<\/p>\n

It was hard to stay hopeful. The small children\u2019s playground where Lau spoke to the Guardian is adjacent to a community centre through which families of victims walked to identify the dead. Once firefighters could finally access the upper floors, there was a steady stream of people leaving the building, often in floods of tears.<\/p>\n

Outside a local school, repurposed as an evacuation shelter, another man sobbed. His parents lived in the towers and were missing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t eat, I can\u2019t sleep. I just need to know \u2026 I don\u2019t expect them to still be alive, I only want you to tell me they\u2019re gone so I can stop missing them. Let me know they\u2019re in heaven,\u201d he cried. \u201cBut I don\u2019t know anything.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Hong Kong apartment fire continued to burn on Thursday.<\/p>\n

He asked: \u201cWhat is John Lee, Hong Kong\u2019s chief executive, doing? All he does is walk around and hold press conferences. What about us? We can\u2019t get any answer to our questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of the city\u2019s grief is racked with anger<\/a>. Since the crackdown on Hong Kong\u2019s pro-democracy movement, the government has made \u201cnational security\u201d its overriding priority. There is a sense among some that while the government has been chasing down any whisper of potential dissent, a building of almost 5,000 people, which authorities knew was not safe, burned down.<\/p>\n

At the volunteer donation site in Tai Po, scores of young people ran various stalls, held cardboard information signs and offered support using collective action skills not seen at this scale since the 2019 protests.<\/p>\n

An online petition even listed \u201cfour demands\u201d, echoing the protests\u2019 \u201cfive demands\u201d for democratic rights, but calling for guaranteed care of victims and accountability for officials in any corrupt activity.<\/p>\n

It appeared to be making the government nervous. After dark on Friday, a squad of armed police officers walked laps of the donation site, and government workers took over from volunteers at the shelters.<\/p>\n

graphic<\/a><\/p>\n

Authorities were quick to act after the fire, arresting three employees of the construction company on Thursday, and launching an independent commission against corruption. On Friday, the anti-corruption watchdog said it had arrested eight people.<\/p>\n

But the ferocity of the fire, and how many people were unable to escape it, has raised significant questions and accusations of complacency, negligence, and corruption in the city\u2019s construction sector.<\/p>\n

The ferocity of the fire has raised significant questions and accusations about complacency, negligence, and corruption in the city\u2019s construction sector. Photograph: Xinhua\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Hong Kong is famously a city of densely packed apartments that stretch into the sky, cramming millions into an area that can be crossed from end to end in just a couple of hours.<\/p>\n

The bamboo scaffolding and mesh that covered Wang Fuk Court is a ubiquitous sight in the city. Hong Kong\u2019s security secretary said on Friday that preliminary investigations had identified the unauthorised and highly flammable styrofoam boards discovered in windows on every level of every tower as the primary cause of the fire\u2019s intensity, and that the mesh was up to standard.<\/p>\n

A man who gave his name as Mr Au lost both his parents to the fire, which also put his brother in intensive care. He said the windows of their home were all sealed with flammable styrofoam-like material.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are too many problems. Repairs are so expensive, and what kind of people did they hire?\u201d said Au. \u201cThe biggest issue is the lack of fire safety awareness. The fire alarm didn\u2019t ring, otherwise my parents could have evacuated.\u201d<\/p>\n

This particular renovation was already controversial before the fire.<\/p>\n

Work began in July 2024, with a reported price tag of HK$330m (\u00a333.5m). The contract, awarded to Prestige Construction & Engineering Co, drew accusations that decision makers had chosen the most expensive proposal, despite the costs being shared by residents, who include social housing recipients.<\/p>\n

Prestige Construction & Engineering Co could not be reached for comment. Local media reported the physical office was closed when they visited during business hours after the fire.<\/p>\n

In September, residents lodged concerns with authorities about the renovations, \u201cincluding the scaffolding netting\u201d, the Hong Kong labour department told the Guardian. The department said they had told residents the netting was to catch falling debris, and that current safety regulations \u201cdo not cover flame retardant standards\u201d for such material. Given the construction did not involve open flames such as welders, the risk was low, they said.<\/p>\n

Authorities were quick to act after the fire, arresting three employees of the construction company and launching an independent inquiry. Photograph: Vernon Yuen\/Nexpher\/Zuma Press Wire\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

That response prompted further complaints, so they clarified that the netting had been inspected, and \u201cmet approval standards\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, the department also said inspectors had visited the site 16 times after the complaints, and issued multiple written warnings about the need for better fire safety measures, including as recently as last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever the government does is useless, says Au. \u201cIt\u2019s already over. I just hope it won\u2019t happen again. Arresting a few people to take responsibility can\u2019t help us. Proper supervision should have been in place from the very beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Lillian Yang<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For almost 48 hours, Mr Lau had been calling his cousin. On Wednesday afternoon Lau was at his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-599710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115628723836388168","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}