The painstaking effort to identify the remains of those killed in the deadly blaze that engulfed a Hong Kong residential complex last week is nearing its conclusion, as specialists complete the difficult search of the heavily charred apartment blocks.
At least 146 people were killed in the city’s worst fire in decades, which tore through seven high-rise towers of the Wang Fuk Court complex. The housing complex is home to more than 4,000 people, many of which are elderly.
An estimated 600 disaster victim identification specialists have been slowly going door to door to clear each apartment since the fire was extinguished Friday.
“During the search, bodies were found in the building corridors, flats, staircases, and even on rooftops,” said police superintendent Cheng Ka-chun, who led the specialist police identification unit.
Images released by police showed boiler suit clad searchers carefully checking through the ashes of burned belongings inside a fire-ravaged unit. The complex task is made harder by dim lighting conditions and narrow corridors blocked by fallen objects, police said.
Officers had to navigate corridors blocked by burned wooden panels to get to apartments where windows were shattered, with walls blackened and paint peeling off.
“The whole apartment has gone pitch-dark without electricity and lighting,” said Cheng, speaking in a press conference on Sunday.
By Sunday night, the search team had removed the remains of the dead from four of the towers, with three yet to be searched.
They also found some pets alive.
Those killed included a number of elderly residents, foreign domestic workers who lived with their employers – many of which are older people or families with children –– and a firefighter who had been deployed to the scene.
Nine of the domestic workers were from Indonesia and one was from the Philippines, their consulates said.
On Sunday, hundreds of Hong Kongers came to lay flowers at the site of the blaze, forming a long queue that stretched more than a kilometer into the Tai Po neighborhood.
Among the mourners were families, elderly people and foreign domestic helpers, many of whom left notes attached to columns of the pavilion in a nearby park.
“Truth will reveal itself. God bless Hong Kong,” one wrote.
Over recent days, donations amounting to 900 million Hong Kong dollars ($115 million) have poured in from businesses and the community, with people also sending food and necessities to a resource center set up by volunteers in the housing complex.
Volunteers helped distribute food and water at the scene.
National security arrests
Some aspects of the community response have drawn suspicion from authorities, who have warned against a resurgence of anti-government sentiment in Hong Kong, referencing pro-democracy protests that broke out in 2019.
Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous part of China and run by its own local government that answers to leaders in Beijing.
On Saturday, Beijing’s national security office in the city warned against any renewed dissent, calling for the city’s government to punish those wishing to use the fire as a pretext to “oppose China and stir chaos in Hong Kong.”
National security police have since arrested three people, including one detained on suspicion of incitement after allegedly distributing materials in support of an online petition calling for an independent enquiry into the fire, among other demands, their lawyers told CNN.
The petition, which has since been removed, had over 10,000 signatures by Saturday afternoon, Reuters reported.
A pro-Beijing newspaper reported that a high-ranking Hong Kong police superintendent in charge of national security also visited the site of the fire.
Authorities have asked volunteers to leave the fire scene, announcing that it would centralize the distribution of resources and require people to register through WhatsApp for their donations.
