‘There should have been an alarm’: in air thick with acrid smoke, people in Hong Kong are reeling and angry | Hong Kong apartment fires

mMore than 24 hours after the first tower fire, a Hong Kong residential complex was still burning. Firefighters pumped water from cherry pickers on the mid-level floors, but above that, the fire was still out of reach.

Wang Fuk Court, in Tai Po, a northern Hong Kong district, was home to about 4,800 people. The eight-tower complex, adorned with bamboo scaffolding and latticework, had been under renovation for years.

On Wednesday afternoon, a fire broke out in one of the rooms, the cause of which is under investigation. The fire spread inside the building and then to neighboring towers. By the evening, seven buildings had caught fire, and the death toll had exceeded Hong Kong’s worst building fire disaster to date.

At least 65 people, including one firefighter, are killed and dozens are injured. At least 55 were rescued but more than 270 are missing. Firefighters were still unable to reach the top levels of some of the 31-storey towers, although an elderly man was rescued alive from his high-rise apartment earlier in the day.

The air was still thick with acrid smoke, which reminded some of what the city smelled like during the worst violence of the 2019 protests. There was a brief panic when a flickering light in the window of a different block was mistaken for another fire, and onlookers panicked when the wind began to blow: Wednesday’s fire had spread to the north because of the bitter cold, said James Tang, who lives in one of the towers.

Tang was not home when the building caught fire. He got a call from his brother-in-law who had seen it from across the river. He ran home but was stopped from going inside.

“I saw the building burning from the outside,” he said, speaking to the Guardian outside a local primary school, which is one of the shelters for evacuated residents.

Tang’s friends at the complex are not among the missing, he said. “But a lot of people died, especially the firemen. We are very sorry about this. The fireman tried to save us from the fire, tried to stop the fire and then he lost his life.”

Nearby, volunteers had set up a market of donated clothes, food and essential items for the homeless residents of Vang Phuc Court and hundreds of others temporarily evacuated from neighboring buildings.

Connie Chu had just returned from grocery shopping to the apartment where she had lived for 42 years when she saw a large number of fire trucks. A neighbor asked him to leave, although none of them had heard the fire alarm.

“There should have been (an alarm),” he said. “When I came out I saw a building on fire, it was a terrible, very big fire. We were very concerned.”

Chu and her neighbors were lucky – their building was the only one of eight in the complex that did not burn.

“I have a friend who lives in one of the other buildings and she’s in the hospital. It sounds pretty serious. I spoke to her on the phone yesterday, she said there was a lot of smoke going into her house.”

The community is shocked, and some are angry: police suspect that the fire was caused by “grossly negligent” action. Hong Kong police have alleged that unsafe scaffolding and foam materials used during maintenance work may be behind the rapid spread of the fire, and have arrested three people from the construction company involved. The Independent Commission Against Corruption has already announced a task force.

There have been long-running complaints about the renovation, including allegations that construction workers turned off the alarms months ago and that workers smoked on site. There are also widespread concerns about the safety standards of nets used at the sites. A video being shared widely on Thursday shows a local council member setting fire to a piece of green construction netting and watching it rapidly melt and burn.

By Thursday night, the surrounding area was still packed with people – emergency services, onlookers, neighbours, victims and their families. The dead were being identified outside a building, people were running out sobbing, clinging to each other. Some people had covered their heads with blankets to avoid the cameras.

Samson Wong, pastor of Cumberland Presbyterian Church, was waiting with a crowd of volunteers to provide emotional and psychological support to families who have lost loved ones.

“They have enough material, but they need emotional support,” he said.