Hong Kong emergency crews uncovered dozens of additional bodies on Friday during an apartment-by-apartment sweep of a high-rise housing complex devastated by a massive fire, pushing the death toll to at least 128 in one of the city’s deadliest blazes on record.
Derek Armstrong Chan, deputy director of Hong Kong Fire Services, said firefighters were prioritizing units tied to more than two dozen unanswered distress calls made during the height of the inferno. Many of those apartments, he said, could not be reached until conditions were safe.
Security Secretary Chris Tang said the toll grew by 34 after additional remains were located in the charred towers. With roughly 200 residents still unaccounted for, Tang warned the number of victims could continue to rise. Eighty-nine of the bodies have yet to be identified.
Officials estimate the full investigation will take at least three to four weeks.
Andy Yeung, director of Fire Services, said preliminary checks revealed that some fire alarms in the Wang Fuk Court complex were not functioning, adding that potential legal consequences were being examined.
The fire ignited on Wednesday afternoon in one of the complex’s eight residential towers and rapidly spread as bamboo scaffolding wrapped in renovation netting caught fire, fueling flames that leapt from building to building. Seven towers were ultimately engulfed.
More than 2,300 firefighters and medical personnel were deployed during the 24-hour battle to bring the blaze under control. Seventy-nine people were injured overall, including 12 firefighters; one firefighter was killed earlier in the operation.
Even two days after the flames were tamed, smoke continued to seep from the skeletal remains of the buildings as crews extinguished intermittent flare-ups. The fire was declared fully out on Friday morning.
The complex in Tai Po district — a northern suburb near the mainland Chinese border — housed nearly 2,000 apartments and about 4,800 residents. It remains unclear how many people may still be trapped inside.
