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On Sunday, a steady stream of people placed bouquets of white roses, carnations, lilies and other flowers at a makeshift memorial outside the blackened buildings. hong kong The apartment complex burst into flames and killed at least 128 people, in one of the city’s deadliest fires.
Many people bowed to the fire place and said short prayers, or left handwritten notes among the flowers.
There has been an outpouring of support and sympathy, with thousands of city residents visiting the fire site to pay tribute to the dead and donate supplies to those who lost everything in the fire, which began on Wednesday and took until Friday to be completely extinguished.
Eight buildings in the Wang Phuc Court complex in the suburb of Tai Po were wrapped in bamboo scaffolding with nylon mesh for renovation, and windows were covered with polystyrene panels, and authorities are now investigating whether fire codes were violated.
Hong Kong authorities announced late Saturday that they had ordered the immediate suspension of work on 28 construction projects undertaken by a single contractor, Prestige Construction & Engineering Co., pending safety audits.
“The Building Department’s decision to temporarily suspend work on 28 projects managed by PC&E was due to a lack of confidence in its ability to ensure site safety,” the government said in a statement.
“The five-alarm fire at Wang Fuc Court, Tai Po exposed PC&E’s serious shortcomings in site safety management, including the widespread use of foam boards to block windows during building repairs,” it said.
Prestige Construction and Engineering Co. did not respond to calls for comment on Sunday.
Three people – directors of a construction company and an engineering consultant – were arrested on suspicion of murder the day after the fire, and police said company leaders were suspected of gross negligence, but did not identify the company by name.
All three were released on bail, but then re-arrested by Hong Kong anti-corruption authorities, who have also arrested eight other suspects, including scaffolding subcontractors, directors of an engineering consultancy company and renovation project managers.
Apartment complex of eight, 31-storey buildings in Tai Po, a suburb near Hong Kong’s border with the mainland ChinaWas built in the 1980s. It contained approximately 2,000 apartments and more than 4,600 residents.
Many people are now housed in short-term emergency shelters or city hotels, and officials are working on long-term solutions.
According to Hong Kong’s Security Secretary Chris Tang, preliminary investigations showed that the fire broke out on the scaffolding netting of a lower level of a building on Wednesday afternoon, and then quickly spread inside as foam panels caught fire and blew out windows.
Winds helped spread the flames from one building to another and soon seven of the eight were engulfed in flames. It took more than 2,000 firefighters, nearly 40 hours, until Friday morning to finally extinguish all the fires.
First responders discovered that some fire alarms at the complex, where many elderly people lived, were not ringing during testing, according to Andy Yeung, director of Hong Kong Fire Services, who is also part of the investigation.
Authorities said Saturday they needed to identify 44 more of the 128 bodies recovered. About 150 people are missing.
The dead include two Indonesian Migrant Workers, Indonesians Ministry of External Affairs Said. One filipino According to the Philippines Consulate General in Hong Kong, a female domestic help also died and 12 others were unaccounted for.
“Far away from her ancestral home, she had made countless sacrifices to provide a better life for her family,” the Consulate General said in a Saturday statement confirming the Filipino woman’s death.
In Beijing, the Ministry of Emergency Management announced nationwide inspections of high-rise buildings to identify and eliminate fire hazards.
“Bamboo scaffolds, non-flame-retardant safety nets… and fire fighting facilities and equipment such as fire hydrant systems, automatic sprinkler systems and automatic fire alarm systems will be among the main items to be inspected,” the ministry said.