Hong Kong firefighters have been searching a high-rise apartment complex after a massive fire killed at least 94 people
Hong Kong firefighters combed through a high-rise apartment complex apartment-by-apartment Friday in a final attempt to find anyone alive after a massive fire engulfed seven of eight towers, killing at least 94 people in one of the city’s deadliest blazes.
Crews were prioritizing apartments from which they received more than two dozen calls for assistance during the blaze but were unable to reach, Derek Armstrong Chan, a deputy director of Hong Kong Fire Services told reporters early Friday morning.
“Our firefighting operation is almost complete,” he said.
The fire started midafternoon Wednesday in one of the Wang Fuk Court complex’s eight towers, jumping rapidly from one to the next as bamboo scaffolding covered in netting in place for renovations caught ablaze until seven buildings were engulfed.
It took more than 1,000 firefighters some 24 hours to bring the five-alarm blaze under control, and even nearly two days later, smoke continued to drift out of the charred skeletons of the buildings from the occasional flare-up.
The final search of the buildings was expected to be completed later Friday at which point officials have said they will officially end the rescue phase of their operation at the complex in Tai Po district, a northern suburb near Hong Kong’s border with mainland China.
