TOPSHOT – Firemen prepare after a serious hearth swept by means of a number of condo blocks on the Wang Fuk Courtroom residential property in Hong Kong’s Tai Po district on November 27, 2025. Hong Kong firefighters had been scouring a still-burning condo complicated for a whole lot of lacking folks on November 27, a day after the blaze tore by means of the high-rises, killing at the least 44. (Picture by Dale DE LA REY / AFP through Getty Photographs)
Dale De La Rey | Afp | Getty Photographs
Hong Kong authorities pressed forward on Monday with combing the remaining condo towers destroyed by a huge hearth at a housing property that killed at the least 146 folks and displaced a whole lot now adjusting to life in non permanent housing.
Police have accomplished sweeps of 4 of the seven towers that had been engulfed within the metropolis’s deadliest hearth in additional than 75 years, discovering our bodies of residents in stairwells and on rooftops, trapped as they tried to flee the flames.
Hundreds have turned out to pay tribute to the victims, who embrace at the least 9 home helpers from Indonesia and one from the Philippines, with strains of mourners stretching greater than a kilometre (a half-mile) alongside a canal subsequent to the doomed Wang Fuk Courtroom property on Sunday.
Vigils are additionally resulting from happen this week in Tokyo and London. Round 40 persons are nonetheless lacking, authorities mentioned.
The reason for the blaze that began final Wednesday and rapidly fanned throughout the outside of the residences underneath renovation remains to be being investigated.
However amid pockets of public anger over missed hearth threat warnings and proof of unsafe building practices, Beijing has warned it could crack down on any “anti-China” protests
No less than one particular person concerned in a petition calling for an impartial probe amongst different calls for has been detained, sources conversant in the matter mentioned.
Police have declined to touch upon specifics, saying solely that they’ll take motion in accordance with the legislation.
Search strikes to worst-affected buildings
The remaining buildings to be scoured for stays are “the tough ones”, Amy Lam, a senior police official advised reporters on Sunday, including that the ultimate leg of the search could take weeks.
Photographs shared by police confirmed officers clad in hazmat fits, face masks and helmets, inspecting rooms with blackened partitions and furnishings decreased to ashes, and wading by means of water used to douse fires that raged for days.
Throngs of officers arrived on the web site early on Monday morning to proceed their search of the burnt-out buildings.
The condo blocks had been residence to greater than 4000 folks, based on census knowledge, and people who escaped should now attempt to get their lives again on monitor.
Greater than 1,100 folks have been moved out of evacuation centres into non permanent housing, with an additional 680 put up in youth hostels and motels, authorities mentioned.
With many residents forsaking belongings as they fled, authorities have provided emergency funds of HK$10,000 ($1,284) to every family and offered particular help for issuing new id playing cards, passports and marriage certificates.
Eleven folks arrested in hearth probe
Hong Kong’s deadliest hearth since 1948, when 176 folks died in a warehouse blaze, has surprised the town, the place legislative elections are resulting from be held this weekend.
Authorities have arrested 11 folks as a part of investigations into potential corruption and using unsafe supplies throughout the renovations.
The constructing was wrapped in inexperienced mesh and bamboo scaffolding and layered with foam insulation on the time. Fireplace alarms on the complicated had been additionally not working correctly, authorities have mentioned.
Residents of Wang Fuk Courtroom had been advised by authorities final 12 months they confronted “comparatively low hearth dangers” after complaining about hearth hazards posed by the renovations, the town’s Labour Division mentioned.
The residents raised considerations in September, 2024, together with in regards to the potential flammability of the mesh contractors used to cowl the scaffolding, a division spokesperson mentioned.
Police on Saturday detained Miles Kwan, 24, a part of a bunch that launched a petition demanding an impartial probe into potential corruption and a evaluation of building oversight, two folks conversant in the matter mentioned. Reuters couldn’t set up whether or not he had been arrested.
Two others have additionally since been arrested on suspicion of seditious intent, the South China Morning Submit mentioned. The police declined to touch upon these reported arrests.
China’s nationwide safety workplace warned people on Saturday in opposition to utilizing the catastrophe to “plunge Hong Kong again into the chaos” of 2019, when huge pro-democracy protests challenged Beijing and triggered a political disaster.
“We sternly warn the anti-China disruptors who try and ‘disrupt Hong Kong by means of catastrophe’,” the workplace mentioned in a press release. “It doesn’t matter what strategies you utilize, you’ll definitely be held accountable and strictly punished.”
