The inferno that tore through a high-rise housing complex in Hong Kong has killed at least 146 people, authorities said Sunday, with around 40 still missing.
Officers had found a further 18 bodies in the Wang Fuk Court tower complex, officials said, as the fallout continues following the deadliest blaze in the Chinese territory in seven decades.
“We expect more to come,” Chief Superintendent Karen Tsang Shuk-yin, the officer in charge of the casualty inquiry unit, told reporters Sunday.
Concluding the search could still take some time, regional police commander Amy Lam Man-han said, with the most difficult areas still yet to be searched.
Some bodies have been found in stairwells and on rooftops where residents had tried to flee, officials said.
Tsang added that 54 bodies could not yet be identified, with around 40 people reported missing and 100 others remaining unaccounted for. She said 79 people were still injured.
Fay Siu Sin-man, chief executive of the Association for the Rights of Industrial Accident Victims, said that a total of five construction workers involved in Wang Fuk Court’s renovation works had died in the fire as of Sunday, according to the South China Morning Post.
Outside the complex, a sea of flowers left by mourners has continued to grow, as the city observes three days of mourning for the victims and investigators scramble to find answers about how the fire became so deadly.
The fire has fueled calls for greater accountability and transparency over potential regulatory negligence, with nearly a dozen arrests made as a probe continues.
Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) said Saturday it had arrested three more people as it investigates whether unsafe and flammable materials were used in renovations and helped spread the fire.
Eight people had already been arrested, including “consultants, scaffolding subcontractors and middleman.”
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The latest three arrestees, ages between 52 and 68, are the people in charge of the contractor, according to the ICAC.
Police on Thursday searched the offices of Prestige Construction and Engineering Co., the registered contractor hired to carry out the renovations. Officers also arrested two directors and an engineering consultant on suspicion of manslaughter.
Hong Kong’s Buildings Department said Saturday it had ordered the temporary suspension of work on 28 private building projects with Prestige Construction & Engineering Co., citing a “lack of confidence” in the contractor’s ability to ensure site safety and, in some cases, concerns over the use of polystyrene foam boards.
Work was also suspended on two other private building maintenance projects where plastic sheeting was found to have been used.
Residents of Wang Fuk Court said they had repeatedly complained to the city’s Labor Department about the flammability of the protective green mesh used to cover the bamboo scaffolding around the buildings, only to be told the fire risk was relatively low, Reuters reported Friday.
Hong Kong’s Secretary for Security Chris Tang told reporters Friday that preliminary findings suggested the fire started in netting surrounding the lower floors of Wang Cheong House, one of the seven affected towers in the Wang Fuk Court complex.
Styrofoam on the windows, which was “highly flammable,” fueled the blaze and caused it to spread rapidly upward, extending to six more buildings. The flames shattered glass and penetrated interiors, burning both inside and outside the structures simultaneously, he said.
The intense heat then ignited the bamboo scaffolding, which sparked secondary fires when it collapsed, he added.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, officials said.
