Death toll in Hong Kong blaze rises to 146 after more bodies found in apartment complex

HONG KONG — Hong Kong authorities say the death toll from the blaze in an apartment complex has risen to 146 after more bodies have been found.

Shuk-yin Tsang, the head of the Hong Kong police casualty unit, told reporters at the scene on Sunday that another 100 people remain unaccounted for. Previously 128 deaths had been reported.

Seven of eight buildings of the Wang Fuk Court complex burned in the blaze that started Wednesday afternoon and wasn’t fully extinguished until Friday morning.

So far, the police victim identification unit has searched through four of the buildings.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

HONG KONG — A steady stream of people placed bouquets of white roses, carnations, lilies and other flowers Sunday at a makeshift memorial outside the blackened buildings of a Hong Kong apartment complex that went up in flames, killing at least 128 people in one of the city’s deadliest blazes.

Many bowed toward the scene of the fire and said short prayers, or left handwritten notes among the flowers.

“This really serves as a wake-up call for everyone, especially with these super high-rise buildings,” said Hong Kong resident Lian Shuzheng, who waited in a line of hundreds of people for an hour to add her flowers to the growing cluster.

There has been an outpouring of support and sympathy, with thousands of city residents visiting the site of the fire to pay tribute to the dead and donate supplies to those who lost everything in the blaze, which started Wednesday and took until Friday to fully extinguish.

Lian said it was “truly heartbreaking” for her to see the scene up close for the first time.

“It is so pitiful, this is truly a disaster,” she said. “I hope it will draw everyone’s attention to safety.”

With dozens of people still unaccounted for, teams from the Hong Kong police’s Disaster Victim Identification Unit continued to search the ruins of the buildings and carried out what appeared to be several body bags Sunday afternoon.

The eight buildings of the Wang Fuk Court complex in the suburb of Tai Po had all been clad in bamboo scaffolding draped with nylon netting for renovations, with windows covered by polystyrene panels, and authorities are now investigating whether fire codes were violated.

Hong Kong officials announced late Saturday they had ordered the immediate suspension of work on 28 building projects undertaken by the same contractor, the Prestige Construction & Engineering Company, for safety audits.

“The Building Department’s decision to temporarily suspend the works on the 28 projects managed by PC&E was due to a lack of confidence in its ability to ensure site safety,” the government said in a statement.

“The five alarm fire at Wang Fuk Court, Tai Po, exposed serious deficiencies of PC&E in site safety management, including the extensive use of foam boards to block up windows during building repairs,” it added.

The Prestige Construction & Engineering Company did not answer calls Sunday for comment.

Three men — the directors and an engineering consultant of a construction company — were arrested the day after the fire broke out on suspicion of manslaughter, and police said company leaders were suspected of gross negligence but they did not identify the firm by name.

Those three were released on bail but then re-arrested by Hong Kong’s anti-corruption authorities, who have also arrested a further eight suspects including scaffolding subcontractors, directors of an engineering consulting company and the renovation project managers.

The apartment complex of eight, 31-story buildings in Tai Po, a suburb near Hong Kong’s border with mainland China, was built in the 1980s. It had almost 2,000 apartments and more than 4,600 residents.

Many are now housed in short-term emergency shelters or city hotels, and authorities are working on longer-term solutions.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Jeffery Chan, a civil servant who came to pay his respects on Sunday.

“As a Hong Konger, seeing people in the place where we live lose their families, lose everything in just one night — if you put yourself in their shoes, it is unbearable. They need encouragement, support and help from the people of Hong Kong,” he said.

Preliminary investigations showed the fire started Wednesday afternoon on a lower-level scaffolding net of one of the buildings, and then spread rapidly inside as the foam panels caught fire and blew out windows, according to Chris Tang, Hong Kong’s secretary for security.

Winds helped the flames jump from building to building and soon seven of the eight were engulfed. It took until Friday morning, some 40 hours later, for more than 2,000 firefighters to finally extinguish all the flames.

First responders found that some fire alarms in the complex, which housed many older people, did not sound when tested, according to Andy Yeung, the director of Hong Kong Fire Services, which is also part of the investigation.

Authorities said Saturday they need to identify 44 more bodies out of the 128 recovered. About 150 people remain unaccounted for.

The dead included seven Indonesian migrant workers, and several dozen are still unaccounted for, the Indonesian Foreign Ministry said. One Filipino woman who was a domestic helper was also killed and 12 others remain unaccounted for, according to the Philippines Consulate General in Hong Kong.

“Far from her native home, she had made innumerable sacrifices to provide a better life for her family,” the Consulate General said in a Saturday statement confirming the Filipino woman’s death.

On Sunday afternoon, several hundred Filipinos packed a pedestrian street in central Hong Kong, saying prayers and singing hymns in tribute to those who died in the tragedy.

In Beijing, the Ministry of Emergency Management announced a nationwide inspection of high-rise buildings to identify and remove fire hazards.

“Bamboo scaffolding, non-flame-retardant safety nets… and firefighting facilities and equipment such as fire hydrant systems, automatic sprinkler systems and automatic fire alarm systems, will be among the main items to be inspected,” the ministry said.

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