The number of victims of a house fire in Hong Kong has risen to 128 people

Hong Kong firefighters found dozens of bodies on Friday in an intensive apartment-by-apartment search in a high-rise complex where… wildfire Seven buildings were invaded, and the authorities arrested 8 more people who participated in the renovation of the towers. The death toll in one of the city’s deadliest fires has risen to 128 people, and many of them are still missing.

Andy Yeung, director of Hong Kong Fire Services, said first responders found that some fire alarms at the complex, which houses many elderly people, did not sound when tested, though he did not say how many were unemployed or whether others were working.

The fire quickly jumped from one building to another in the form of foam panels and Bamboo scaffolding The nets, apparently installed by a construction company, caught fire.

The Independent Anti-Corruption Commission said in a statement that on Friday, authorities arrested seven men and a woman, between the ages of 40 and 63, including scaffolding contractors, directors of an engineering consulting company, and project managers supervising renovation work.

On Friday, crews prioritized apartments where they received emergency calls During the fire Derek Armstrong Chan, deputy director of Hong Kong Fire Services, told reporters that they were unable to arrive during the hours the fire was out of control. It took firefighters one day to control the fire, and it was not completely extinguished until Friday morning, about 40 hours after it broke out.

Even two days after the fire started, smoke continued to drift from the charred skeletons of buildings as a result of occasional flare-ups.

It is possible that more bodies will be found

Security Minister Chris Tang told reporters that about 200 people were still missing. This includes 89 bodies that have not yet been identified. Authorities said more bodies were likely to be recovered, although crews had finished searching for anyone trapped inside.

More than 2,300 firefighters and medical personnel were involved in the operation, and 12 firefighters were among the 79 people injured, Young said. He had earlier said that a firefighter was also killed.

Wang Fook Court resident Katie Lo, 70, was not home when the fire broke out on Wednesday. She rushed back about an hour later to notice that the fire had spread to the building where she lived.

“This is my home… I still can’t really believe what happened,” Lu said Friday as she registered for government assistance for affected families. “It all still seems like a bad dream.”

The Indonesian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that two Indonesian migrant workers were among the dead. Indonesian Consul General Yul Edison said that about 11 other migrants from the country who were working as domestic helpers in the residential complex were still missing.

The government said that all official flags in the city will be flown at half-mast in mourning from Saturday to Monday. City Leader John Lee will observe a three-minute silence on Saturday from Government House.

the Residential complex The eight 31-storey buildings in the Tai Po area, a suburb close to Hong Kong’s border with mainland China, were constructed in the 1980s and have undergone a major renovation. It had approximately 2,000 apartments and about 4,800 residents.

Blame the highly flammable foam boards

Three men – directors and an engineering consultant for a construction company – were arrested on Thursday on suspicion of manslaughter, and The police said The company’s leaders were suspected of gross negligence.

Police did not identify the company where the suspects worked, but documents posted on the homeowners association’s website showed that Prestige Construction and Engineering was responsible for the renovation work. The police confiscated the company’s boxes of documents, and the phone rang without an answer on Thursday.

In addition to the new arrests on Friday, the anti-corruption agency also searched the suspects’ offices and seized relevant documents and bank records.

Police said they found highly flammable plastic panels attached to windows on each floor of the only tower that was not affected. It is believed that the construction company installed the panels, but the purpose was not clear.

Tang, the security minister, said initial investigations showed that the fire started in a low-level scaffolding network in one of the buildings, and then spread quickly when foam boards caught fire.

"“The fire ignited the foam panels, causing the glass to shatter and causing the fire to rapidly intensify and spread to the interior spaces,” Tang said.

Authorities suspected that some materials on the exterior walls of high-rise buildings did not meet fire resistance standards, allowing the fire to spread unusually quickly.

Authorities planned to conduct immediate inspections of residential complexes undergoing major renovations to ensure that scaffolding and building materials meet safety standards.

The fire was the deadliest in Hong Kong in decades. A 1996 fire in a commercial building in Kowloon killed 41 people. A warehouse fire in 1948 killed 176 people, according to the South China Morning Post.