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Firefighters in Hong Kong fought through a second day to fully extinguish a massive blaze that engulfed the Wang Fuk Court public housing complex in Tai Po, leaving 128 people dead and marking one of the deadliest fires in the city’s modern history.

Thick black smoke continued to billow from windows of the scorched towers as rescue teams, equipped with flashlights, moved methodically from apartment to apartment in the seven affected buildings, searching the blackened ruins for any remaining survivors or victims. The densely packed Wang Fuk Court, home to thousands of residents in the northern suburb near the border with mainland China, was largely reduced to a charred shell.

Fire Services officials confirmed that crews were still tackling hot spots in a small number of units and attempting to gain access to every apartment across the seven towers to rule out additional casualties.

 

“Our firefighting operation is almost complete,” Derek Armstrong Chan, deputy director of Fire Services Operations, told reporters. He added that firefighters were now focused on “preventing the debris and embers from flaring up. What’s next is the search and rescue operation.”

 

The exact number of people still missing or trapped remained unclear. Earlier on Thursday morning, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee said authorities had lost contact with 279 residents. No updated figure on the missing was provided during Thursday’s official briefings.

 

Video footage from the scene showed rescuers working in near darkness inside apartments while occasional orange flames flickered from some windows, despite the overall complex appearing as a blackened ruin.

 

The fire broke out mid-afternoon on Wednesday and is believed to have begun in bamboo scaffolding and construction netting surrounding one of the towers before spreading with extraordinary speed across seven of the estate’s eight buildings.

Chan described the blaze as spreading “exceptionally fast” and said emergency responders faced severe obstacles. “Debris and scaffolding were falling from upper floors,” he explained. “There are also other reasons like high temperature, darkness … (and) emergency vehicle access was blocked by fallen scaffolding and debris, making our access to the building very difficult.”

 

In addition to the 94 confirmed deaths, more than 70 people were injured, including 11 firefighters, the Fire Services Department reported. Approximately 900 residents were evacuated and spent the night in temporary shelters.

Pope Leo XIV sent a telegram to Hong Kong’s bishop on Thursday expressing deep sadness over the tragedy and offering prayers for the injured, their families, and the emergency workers.

 

Among those anxiously awaiting news was resident Lawrence Lee, whose wife is believed to remain trapped inside their apartment. Speaking from one of the temporary shelters, he recounted their last phone conversation as the fire began: “When the fire started, I told her on the phone to escape. But once she left the flat, the corridor and stairs were all filled with smoke, and it was all dark, so she had no choice but to go back to the flat.”

Winter Chung, 75, and his wife Sandy, who lived in one of the affected towers, managed to evacuate on Wednesday afternoon after seeing sparks flying around them. Although safe, the couple remained deeply shaken. “I couldn’t sleep the entire night,” Winter Chung told The Associated Press on Thursday.

In a significant development, police arrested three men—two directors and an engineering consultant of a construction firm—on suspicion of manslaughter. “We have reason to believe that those in charge of the construction company were grossly negligent,” said Eileen Chung, a senior superintendent of police. The company itself was not officially named by police at the time of the arrests.

On Thursday, officers also raided the offices of Prestige Construction & Engineering Company, which the Associated Press confirmed had been contracted for renovation work at the complex. Police removed boxes of documents as evidence, according to local media reports. Calls to Prestige went unanswered.

Investigators suspect that certain exterior wall materials failed to meet required fire-resistance standards, contributing to the fire’s rapid spread. In the one tower that remained untouched by flames, police discovered highly flammable plastic foam panels attached near elevator lobbies on each floor. Secretary for Security Chris Tang said the purpose of these panels was unclear but that they appeared to have been installed by the construction company and would be thoroughly investigated.

The Wang Fuk Court estate, built in the 1980s, comprises eight buildings with nearly 2,000 apartments housing around 4,800 residents, many of them elderly. The complex had been undergoing extensive renovation work.

 

Also Read: 13 killed in Hong Kong housing complex fire

Authorities believe the fire originated on external bamboo scaffolding of a 32-storey block before wind-assisted flames travelled along the scaffolding and netting into the buildings and then to neighbouring towers. Bamboo scaffolding, long a hallmark of Hong Kong construction sites, is now under intense scrutiny.

 

Chief Secretary for Administration Eric Chan announced that the government intends to phase it out in favour of metal alternatives. “While we also know that bamboo scaffolding has a long history in Hong Kong, its flame retardancy is inferior to that of metal scaffolding. For safety reasons, the government believes that a complete switch to metal scaffolding should be implemented in suitable working environments,” he said.

Immediate safety inspections were ordered for all public housing estates currently undergoing major renovation, with particular attention to scaffolding and construction materials.

Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption also confirmed on Thursday that it has launched a separate probe into possible corruption linked to the renovation contract. The tragedy is the deadliest fire in Hong Kong in decades, surpassing a 1996 blaze in a Kowloon commercial building that claimed 41 lives after burning for around 20 hours.

 

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