Now up to confirmed 55 dead.
Three men have reportedly been arrested.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/livestory/hong-kong-apartment-complex-fire-9.6992796
Guy
This is wack….
So first they refused to evacuate…
Later when it got worse, they called for help and firefighters had to come back to their apartment to help them…
And then they said they were lucky to get help, why didn’t they evacuate the first time???
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Clearly they miscalculated and did not expect the flames to jump across buildings, which of course is what happened.
Guy
If a fire fighter bangs on the door and tells people to evacuate, it’s a good idea to actually evacuate
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No disagreement with you there!
Guy
Arresting 3?
How about fire inspectors and their supervisors and on up?
Seems under such projects it shouldn’t just be periodic inspections; but pretty much 24/7
I have no idea how many (more?) heads will roll over this awful event.
The three arrested are apparently being charged with manslaughter.
Guy
People are stubborn as hell.
I’m volunteering as the evacuation team at my company. One time, we had a fire evacuation drill. This was announced a few weeks in advance and was put on everyone’s work calendar.
Nevertheless, when the actual alarm sounded, there were still some people that were in “important” meetings and refused to leave.
As part of the evacuation team duties, I have to report everyone that refuses to evacuate. The threat of being reported seems to motivate people. It was the only time I got to yell at my manager and tell him what to do, which was great.
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Old people are stubborn the world over.
With these awful events, I wonder if @Firefighter has some analysis of what happened?
Guy
covering windows w/foamcore, which is highly flammable unless treated, may have exacerbated the fire. And this:
“One Wang Fuk Court resident, Lau Yu Hung, a 78-year-old resident, said that many of the windows in his building were covered with a thin layer of polystyrene foam, and that he had heard that it was meant to protect the glass from the repairs being done to the facade. The material blocked much of the light and prevented residents from seeing outside, he said. It was only because of a small gap in the foam covering his bathroom window that he had been able to see that a neighboring building was on fire and escape in time, he said.”
What about the fire/safety inspectors and government that oversee them?
It seems a project that size should have 24/7 inspection until complete. Just have a permanent office staffed and required to file daily reports until the project is complete
This op-ed by a Hong Konger living in Taiwan looks at the state’s response to the terrible fire in late November, seeing failures of governance and not bamboo-as-culprit as an explanation of what went terribly wrong.
Guy
In addition to this piece in the Taipei Times linked above, forumosans may also want to check out this scathing piece by Athena Tong writing at Nikkei Asia (paywalled):
An accessible archived version of this op-ed can be found here:
Some takeaways:
The “bamboo problem” is not just a weak explanation; it functions as a tool of cognitive warfare. Its purpose is to guide the public toward forgetting – either to forget the Tai Po fire entirely once the news cycle moves on, or to forget who was actually responsible and treat it as something closer to a natural disaster than an engineered failure. By centering a centuries-old building material, it blurs the fact that this was a chain of human decisions about tenders, materials, inspections and enforcement.
Since the dismantling of the pro-democracy camp in the legislature and the closure or neutering of local independent media, there are far fewer institutional actors left to keep construction firms, consultants, owners’ corporations and regulators in check. What used to be a contested public sphere – lawmakers demanded documents, journalists ran data projects, and civil groups litigated or lobbied – is now replaced by a narrower ecosystem in which official messaging travels with less resistance, helping consolidate a memory of Tai Po as an unfortunate accident of culture and physics rather than a predictable outcome of collusion and negligence.
Guy
Chinese authorities can do no wrong. Ever. Let the low level peasants scape goat the entire situation. Rinse and repeat. If anyone complains toomkuch, there are ways to deal with them as well. It’s sad, all around.
Those who demanded accountability from the government for this human made disaster were arrested with sedition charges by national security police.
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