44
votes
Hong Kong buildings blaze kills at least thirty-six people, hundreds missing
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- Title
- Four dead after fire engulfs residential high-rise buildings in Hong Kong
- Authors
- Tyrone Siu, Joyce Zhou
- Published
- Nov 26 2025
- Word count
- 595 words
My dad and I are just staring at the footage in shock. That was near my neighbourhood, one train station over
The one mercy is that the fire happened before 3, when many people would be at school or work. Seeing those clips and footage felt almost surreal, I can't imagine anyone on the higher floors surviving...
I kept thinking about your comment all day yesterday and today. It is a small fortune out of ten thousand misfortunes indeed. Shudder to think if it had been in the dead of night.
I heard on Threads the fire alarms in at least one of the buildings did not go off. Also worth noting that these are 31 storey buildings, which make escape for the elderly challenging even if they had been altered to leave on time.....
At least 55 dead and hundreds missing after fire engulfs Hong Kong tower blocks (BBC)
Some context.
The buildings are a type of subsidized housing where they're bought and sold, but at very controlled and reduced rates; they are also quite old, built in 1983. Tai Po is also an area that was considered very far North of city centre in the 80s when the mass network wasnt as well developed. There are a lot of seniors and less well to do families in these towers.
The hypothesis under investigation right now is that instead of expensive single-use materials which meet fire safety standards, the company had chosen to use regular big standard styrofoam which are reusable.
But don't praise swift action by these [redacted] "police" too quickly; it's normal for [redacted] Chinese authorities to roll random heads swiftly in order to avoid public backlash. Unrelated to the fire they are still putting people in jail for thought crime and free speech. Presumably found cannabis, but the charges are for National Security along with other insane crackdown
Forgive my ignorance, but how 'independent' is Hong Kong? I always thought they were mostly independent, but then reading through your crackdown link, it sounds like that may not be the case at all.
I saw the article last night about the arrests and thought the same thing. Like the fires are still going and you've made three arrests already? Seemed scapegoat-y to me but I didn't know enough about the incident or HK to make such a claim.
It's not been good. There were sweeping protests in 2014, then even more in 2019. Many of our democratically elected Legislative Council representatives are/were in prison; Jimmy Lai who owned Apple Daily news is still in prison. Joshua Wong of Teenager Vs Superpower (2017) is still in prison. His other teen buddy Agnes Chow was in prison, made bail, and is now in exile in Canada. Nathan Law escaped before the national security law crackdown and lives in the UK now with an active $1million HKD bounty. Many, many, many good people in prison.
I'll give two other pieces of trivia related to the fire to stop myself from rambling and bringing it back to this topic:
The chief exec (eg, "mayor" of Hong Kong), in his first official address of the disaster, thanked Xi Jinping and the Beijing liaison office before firefighters, paramedics, or community emergency responders (cn - mingpao). One firefighter (38) has perished.
They're taking the chance to halt their little patriots only (literally, this is their terminology) election, because of the disaster, they said. (en, HKFP). If you have a minute to skim the headlines of this sham it'll give you an idea of the absurd pantomime. Eg, they're sending out "thank you cards" to people who have voted, and spending an insane amount of money for perks and advertising and free admission activities etc to promote this. TV ads were every other ad all day every day. To promote "democracy" to a city that previously stood in line for hours in pouring rain for a self organized ballot they know the government will 100% ignore.
I saw some far off footage earlier and hoped it wouldn't be something like this, but it seemed unlikely. That area is SO dense i wouldn't be shocked if numbers continue to rise.
Dec 3.
Death toll now
151159 - plus 70 animals.BBC interactive guide visualizes where the fire happened, what the towers look like in arrangements, an excellent play by play. (Some Cantonese swearing has been bleeped out - swearing is very local and not considered obscene, just less polite, and in cases like this where they're urging people to escape, it's an emphasis modifier). No alarms are heard.
In those 6 minutes, had there been an alarm, many could have escaped. Certainly those in adjacent towers could have escaped in 90 minutes.
A floorplan further down the article will also illustrate that these are very small units, "between 430 sq ft (40 sq m) and 540 sq ft (50 sq m)". Note many of them have three-side-walls around a bed, which is quite common. The density of belongings is therefore very high: think storage above and below bed, entertainment unit with fold out tables, raised bedroom floor storage units, floor to ceiling bookcases etc.
Eg, when relatives see it in the news or social media, and then calling their loved ones.
Some individual stories
Mrs Yip (Pulse HK News, video, Cantonese) in Block E (second tower on fire) didn't make it, but she made sure to save 4 others + 1 dog first by going door to door banging on neighbours' doors. Her husband says, comforting a surviving neighbour in guilt, that's very in character with her personality, that she would do what she felt needed to do. "I believe she has no regrets over the decision."
From the same coverage, 18:37, the courage of several foreign national domestic workers also highlighted. HK relies on domestic workers for almost all aspects of life, but they are often sidelined. Nerissa ran down 23 flights to safety with her employer's toddler (The Standard, en); Vames saved a toddler and grandma down 17 storeys (Sydney Morning Herald, en); Rhodora is hospitalized but stable, after saving a 3 month old baby (The Standard, en); (Manila Standard, en). The Pulse video reports 10 domestic workers have died, and 49 missing.
Interview with Mr Lee (BBC News Chinese, video, Cantonese) in second floor Block F (first tower on fire); he invited two elderly neighbours into his home to wait for rescue. When firefighters came with skylift ladder, the elderly couple says, "handsome, you should leave first", to which he replied, "I'm young, I'll be okay, you two leave first". Looking around for the last time, he wondered what memento he can take with him, but he felt the inferno was telling him, "there is nothing that you can take. You have neither the authority nor ability to stop me from engulfing all." He made it, and was reunited with his wife and two kids. (SCMP english sub of interview with Mr Lee)
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Residents of Block H (宏志閣), the only tower not affected, are permitted inside today to pack up a few things. Residents and survivors of the other blocks are still in temporary hotel accommodations, which are so far slated for 14 days. No news of where they're supposed to go afterwards or if Block H will re-open. (BBC cn, video One resident of Block H took photos of styrofoam at the windows, and construction material piled in fire escape stairwell, calling into question the condition of the other towers' escape paths.
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The HK/Chinese government is doing their thing. No further comment.