Dozens more bodies recovered after Hong Kong blaze, raising death toll to 128

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong firefighters found dozens more bodies Friday during an intensive apartment-by-apartment search of a high-rise tower complex, after a massive fire engulfed seven of its eight buildings. The death toll in one of the city’s deadliest blazes is now at least 128.

Crews prioritized apartments from which they received more than two dozen calls for assistance during the blaze but were unable to reach, Derek Armstrong Chan, a deputy director of Hong Kong Fire Services, told reporters.

The toll was increased by 34 after more bodies were found in the blackened towers, and Secretary for Security Chris Tang told reporters at the scene that the search for victims was continuing and the numbers could still rise.

Eighty-nine of the recovered bodies have not yet been identified, Tang said. Some 200 people remain unaccounted for. Overall, he said he expected the investigation into the fire to last at least three to four weeks.

Andy Yeung, the director of Hong Kong Fire Services, said that first responders found that some fire alarms in the complex were not functioning and that there could be legal consequences.

The fire started midafternoon Wednesday in one of the Wang Fuk Court complex’s eight towers, jumping rapidly from one to the next as bamboo scaffolding covered in netting in place for renovations caught ablaze until seven buildings were engulfed.

It took firefighters some 24 hours to bring the blaze under control, and even nearly two days later, smoke continued to drift out of the charred skeletons of the buildings from the occasional flare-up.

It was not declared fully out until Friday morning.

In total, 2,300 firefighters and medical personnel were involved in the operation, and 12 firefighters were among the 79 people injured overall, Yeung said. One firefighter was also killed, he had said previously.

It was unclear how many people could still be inside the buildings, at the complex in Tai Po district, a northern suburb near Hong Kong’s border with mainland China, which had almost 2,000 apartments and some 4,800 residents.

Most of the casualties were in the first two buildings to catch fire, Chan said.

The apartment complex housed many older people. It was built in the 1980s and had been undergoing a major renovation. Hong Kong’s anti-corruption agency said on Thursday it was investigating possible corruption relating to the renovation project.

Three men — the directors and an engineering consultant of a construction company — have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, and police said company leaders were suspected of gross negligence.

Police have not identified the company where the suspects worked, but The Associated Press confirmed Prestige Construction & Engineering Company was in charge of renovations in the tower complex. Police have seized boxes of documents from the company, where phones rang unanswered Thursday.

Authorities suspected some materials on the exterior walls of the high-rise buildings did not meet fire resistance standards, allowing the unusually fast spread of the fire.

Police also said they found plastic foam panels — which are highly flammable — attached to the windows on each floor near the elevator lobby of the one unaffected tower. The panels were believed to have been installed by the construction company but the purpose was not clear.

Authorities planned immediate inspections of housing estates undergoing major renovations to ensure scaffolding and construction materials meet safety standards.

The fire was the deadliest in Hong Kong in decades. A 1996 fire in a commercial building in Kowloon killed 41 people. A warehouse fire in 1948 killed 176 people, according to the South China Morning Post.

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Researcher Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed to this report.

This story has corrected the name of a fire services official to Derek Armstrong Chan, not Wong Ka Wing.