Painstaking search for victims of Hong Kong fire continues but some may never be found, official says

By Chris Lau, Rhea Mogul, CNN

Hong Kong (CNN) — The remains of some of those killed in last week’s inferno at a Hong Kong apartment complex may never be recovered, a city official said Monday, as a painstaking search effort continues at the site.

The death toll has risen to 151 people and at least 30 remain missing, officials said Monday, after the city’s worst fire in decades, which tore through seven high-rise towers of the Wang Fuk Court complex. The housing complex, which was undergoing renovations, was home to more than 4,000 people, many of which were elderly.

“Since some of the bodies have been reduced to ashes, we don’t rule out that we may not be able to bring all the missing people out,” said Chief Superintendent Karen Tsang, head of the casualty inquiry unit, who fought back tears during a press conference on Monday afternoon.

The number of people arrested over the fire has risen to 14 and more arrests may follow, authorities said, as they accused construction companies of buying and using materials that were not fire-safe.

Most of those arrested are consultants, contractors and subcontractors connected to the construction work, and 13 of them are being investigated on suspicion of “manslaughter by way of gross negligence,” officials said.

An estimated 600 disaster victim identification specialists have been slowly going door to door to clear each apartment since the fire was extinguished Friday.

“During the search, bodies were found in the building corridors, flats, staircases, and even on rooftops,” said police superintendent Cheng Ka-chun, who led the specialist police identification unit.

Images released by police showed boiler-suit-clad searchers carefully checking through the ashes of burned belongings inside a fire-ravaged unit. The complex task is made harder by dim lighting conditions and narrow corridors blocked by fallen objects, police said.

Officers had to navigate corridors blocked by burned wooden panels to get to apartments where windows were shattered, with walls blackened and paint peeling off.

“The whole apartment has gone pitch-dark without electricity and lighting,” Cheng said Sunday.

By Monday night, the search had concluded at five of the towers, but officials said some apartments in the remaining two damaged blocks were structurally unsafe for searchers to enter.

“Everyone remembers Wang Cheong House was the first to catch fire and was among the last to be put out,” said Regional Commander Lam Man-han, adding that “the environment is extremely horrible.”

Those killed included a number of elderly residents, foreign domestic workers who lived with their employers – many of which are older people or families with children –– construction workers and a firefighter who had been deployed to the scene.

Nine of the domestic workers were from Indonesia and one was from the Philippines, their consulates said.

Substandard netting

Substandard mesh netting that was wrapping bamboo scaffolding around the complex towers contributed to the rapid spread of the blaze, officials said Monday.

Seven of 20 samples taken from the complex after the fire had failed fire safety tests, said Hong Kong’s Secretary for Security Chris Tang.

A corruption probe into 12 of those arrested is now underway.

Woo Ying-ming, the city’s corruption commissioner, said the netting around the building had been damaged during a typhoon in July and accused the group of purchasing non-compliant netting to replace it. “They applied it on the damaged spots,” said Woo, who added that officials had calculated they had bought enough to wrap all eight towers at the complex.

Fearing the netting would be examined after a fire at another Hong Kong high-rise in October, the group allegedly purchased more fire-safe netting that they wrapped only around the ground floors one the buildings, said Woo.

“The suspects are very cunning,” said Chief Secretary Chan Kwok-ki. “For very little profits, they take the lives of many people.”

The city’s building department is now collecting samples from 300 building sites where similar netting is being used.

Polystyrene boards that were used by contractors to block windows at the complex have been identified as another factor that contributed to the speed of the inferno’s spread. Officials said they had identified three other building sites in the city where the same technique was being used and asked for the boards to be removed.

Hong Kong mourns

On Sunday, hundreds of Hong Kongers came to lay flowers at the site of the blaze, forming a long queue that stretched more than a kilometer into the Tai Po neighborhood.

Among the mourners were families, elderly people and foreign domestic helpers, many of whom left notes attached to columns of the pavilion in a nearby park.

“Truth will reveal itself. God bless Hong Kong,” one wrote.

Over recent days, donations amounting to 900 million Hong Kong dollars ($115 million) have poured in from businesses and the community, with people also sending food and necessities to a resource center set up by volunteers in the housing complex.

Volunteers helped distribute food and water at the scene.

National security arrests

Some aspects of the community response have drawn suspicion from authorities, who have warned against a resurgence of anti-government sentiment in Hong Kong, referencing pro-democracy protests that broke out in 2019.

Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous part of China and run by its own local government that answers to leaders in Beijing.

On Saturday, Beijing’s national security office in the city warned against any renewed dissent, calling for the city’s government to punish those wishing to use the fire as a pretext to “oppose China and stir chaos in Hong Kong.”

National security police have since arrested three people, including one detained on suspicion of incitement after allegedly distributing materials in support of an online petition calling for an independent enquiry into the fire, among other demands, their lawyers told CNN.

The petition, which has since been removed, had over 10,000 signatures by Saturday afternoon, Reuters reported.

A pro-Beijing newspaper reported that a high-ranking Hong Kong police superintendent in charge of national security also visited the site of the fire.

Authorities have asked volunteers to leave the fire scene, announcing that it would centralize the distribution of resources and require people to register through WhatsApp for their donations.

This article has been updated with additional information.

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