WORST FIRE SINCE 1948
The confirmed death toll rose to 94 early on Friday, the Hospital Authority said.
Two of the dead were Indonesian nationals working as domestic helpers, the Indonesian consulate said. Hong Kong has around 368,000 domestic workers, mostly women from low-income Asian countries who live with their employers.
The fire is now Hong Kong’s deadliest since 1948, when 176 people died in a warehouse blaze, and has prompted comparisons to London’s Grenfell Tower inferno, which killed 72 people in 2017. That fire was blamed on firms fitting the exterior with flammable cladding, as well as failings by the government and the construction industry.
Police arrested two directors and an engineering consultant of Prestige Construction, a firm that had been doing maintenance on the buildings for more than a year.
“We have reason to believe that the company’s responsible parties were grossly negligent, which led to this accident and caused the fire to spread uncontrollably, resulting in major casualties,” Police Superintendent Eileen Chung said on Thursday. Prestige did not answer repeated calls for comment.
Police seized bidding documents, a list of employees, 14 computers and three mobile phones in a raid of the company’s office, the government added.
The city’s development bureau has discussed gradually replacing bamboo scaffolding with metal scaffolding as a safety measure. Hong Kong’s leader, John Lee, said the government would set up a HK$300 million (US$39 million) fund to help residents while some of China’s biggest listed companies announced donations.
On the second night after the blaze, dozens of evacuees set up mattresses in a nearby mall, many saying official evacuation centres should be saved for those in greater need.
People – from elderly residents to schoolchildren – wrapped themselves in duvets and huddled in tents outside a McDonald’s restaurant and convenience shops as volunteers handed out snacks and toiletries.
Hong Kong, one of the world’s most densely populated cities, is scattered with high-rise housing complexes. Its sky-high property prices have long been a trigger for discontent and the tragedy could stoke resentment towards authorities despite efforts to tighten political and national security control.
The leadership of both the Hong Kong government and China’s Communist Party moved quickly to show they attached utmost importance to a tragedy seen as a potential test of Beijing’s grip on the semi-autonomous region.
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