HONG KONG – Kan Shui-ying was home alone on Wednesday, watching television in her Hong Kong apartment while her husband and son were at work. It was around 3 p.m., he said, when he “smelled a strong burning smell.”
He thought something might be boiling, so he went to check it.
“I opened the window to see if there was anything,” Kan told NBC News. “At that time, a friend called me and said, ‘Wang Fuk Court is on fire!’”
Taking just his phone, Kan went downstairs to see what was going on and found that the fire was already “burning very fiercely.”
“I thought I was just coming down to take a quick look,” he said, not realizing “that this was such a serious disaster.”
Kan and his family were among hundreds who lost their homes in the fire at the high-rise housing complex in Tai Po district, north of Hong Kong. At least 83 people have died and dozens more are missing in the deadliest fire to hit Chinese territory in seven decades.
Investigators are focusing on the bamboo scaffolding and mesh netting that surrounded the eight towers of the Wang Fuk court, seven of which were engulfed in flames. Three people from a contractor hired to carry out renovations were arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, amid questions about whether construction materials did not meet safety standards and helped spread the fire.
John Lee, Hong Kong’s top leader, said late Thursday that the fire was now “largely under control.” He also said the city’s Development Office had met with industry representatives to discuss gradually replacing the city’s widely used bamboo scaffolding with metal.
Bamboo scaffolding, a tradition with roots in ancient Chinese architecture, is an iconic part of Hong Kong, an international financial center where skyscrapers are the norm. Joined together by nylon cords, lattices are used in both new constructions and buildings undergoing renovation.
Construction workers with specialized training in bamboo scaffolding, known as “spider men,” climb hundreds of feet up the sides of gleaming buildings in Hong Kong, a densely populated city of 7.5 million people. Scaffolds are often covered with mesh safety nets in green and other colors to prevent debris from falling on pedestrians below.
