Death toll rises to 128 in Hong Kong’s Blaze apartment complex, tied for 8 more – nationally
Hong Kong firefighters found several more bodies on Friday in a warm apartment in a high-rise apartment building where a massive fire broke out in seven fires, and authorities arrested eight more people involved in the revival of the eight.
The death toll from one of the city’s deadliest blazes has risen to 128, and many remain unaccounted for.
First responders found that some of the fire alarms in this story, which housed many elderly people, did not sound when tested, said Andy Yeang, director of Hong Kong Fire Services, although they were not working even if others were not working.
Blaze quickly jumped from one building to another as the bamboo scaffolding covered with netting and foam panels were apparently installed by a construction company.
The authorities on Friday arrested seven men and a woman, ranging in age from 40 to 63, directors of the company’s engineering consulting company and project managers overseeing the repair, said the independent manager against fraud.
On Friday, the priority teams of the apartments had received emergency calls during the fire but could not reach the fire in the hours that burned out of control, said the deputy director of the Hong Kong Fire Department, told reporters. It took firefighters 24 hours to bring the fire under control, and it wasn’t fully contained until Friday morning.
Even two days after the start of the fire, smoke continued to come out of the skeletons of the buildings from the occasional flare-up.
Another 200 people remain unaccounted for, security secretary Chris Tang told reporters. That includes 89 bodies that have never been identified. However, more bodies may be found, authorities said, although crews have finished searching for anyone alive trapped inside.
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More than 2,300 firefighters and medical personnel participated in the operation, and 12 firefighters were among the 79 people, he said. One firefighter was killed, he had said earlier.
Katy Lo, 70, who lives in Wang Fuk Court, was not at home when the fire started on Wednesday. He ran back about an hour later to see that the fire had spread to his building.
“This is my home. “This all still feels like a nightmare.
The eight-story, 31-story complex in Tai Po Po district, a suburb near the border of Hong Kong and Mainland China, was built in the 1980s and was remodeled in the 1980s and renovated in the 1980s. It had about 2,000 rooms and about 4,800 residents.
Flames engulf a building after a fire broke out at Wang Fuk Court, a residential area in Tai Po district of Hong Kong, on Wednesday, November 26, 2025.
AP Photo / Chan Long Hei
Three men – Directors and an engineering consultant of a construction company – were arrested on Thursday on suspicion of murder, and the police said that the leaders of the company were accused of gross negligence.
Police did not identify the company where the suspects worked, but documents posted on the website of the Association of Home Organizations show that the construction and engineering company was in charge of renovations. The police took boxes of documents from the company, where the phones were ringing on Thursday.
In addition to the new arrests on Friday, the Anti-Corruption Agency quickly searched the offices of the suspects and seized relevant documents and bank records.
Authorities suspected some materials on the exterior walls of the high-rise buildings did not meet fire resistance standards, allowing the fire to spread irregularly.
Police said they found flammable foam panels attached to windows on each floor of the affected Tower. The panels are believed to have been installed by a construction company but the purpose was unclear.
A preliminary investigation showed the fire started in the lower net of the building, then spread quickly as the foam panels caught fire, said Tang, the security secretary.
Firefighters work to put out a fire that broke out on Wednesday at Wang Fuk Court, a residential area in Tai Poo New District, in November.
AP Photo / Chan Long Hei
“The blaze blew out the foam panels, causing the glass to shatter and lead to the rapid strengthening of the fire and the spread of its gaps,” said Tang.
Authorities have planned rapid inspections of buildings undergoing major renovations to ensure that structural and construction drawings meet safety standards.
The fire was Hong Kong’s deadliest in decades. A 1996 fire at a commercial building in Kowloon killed 41 people. A warehouse fire in 1948 killed 176 people, according to the South China Morning Post.
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