Hong Kong anti-corruption agency arrests eight over deadly apartment towers fire

Hong Kong’s anti-corruption agency says it has arrested eight people connected to the renovation of the high-rise apartments that were engulfed in a massive fire that left 128 people dead.

Seven men and one woman, aged between 40 and 63, including scaffolding subcontractors, directors of an engineering consultancy and project managers supervising the renovation, were detained, the Independent Commission Against Corruption said in a statement.

The agency also searched their offices on Friday and seized documents and bank records. The investigation over possible corruption in the renovation project was launched on Thursday after the fire broke out.

The arrests were announced after firefighters found dozens more bodies on Friday, taking the death toll to 128, with many still unaccounted for.

First responders found that some fire alarms in the complex, which housed many older people, did not sound when tested, said Andy Yeung, the director of Hong Kong Fire Services, though he did not say how many were not working.

The blaze jumped rapidly from one building to the next as bamboo scaffolding covered in netting and foam panels apparently installed by a construction company caught fire.

On Friday, crews prioritised apartments from which they had received emergency calls during the blaze but were unable to reach in the hours that the fire burned out of control, Derek Armstrong Chan, a deputy director of Hong Kong Fire Services, told reporters.

It took firefighters 24 hours to bring the fire under control, and it was not fully extinguished until Friday morning.

About 200 people remain unaccounted for, secretary for security Chris Tang told reporters. That includes 89 bodies that have not yet been identified. More bodies might be recovered, authorities said, though crews have finished a search for anyone living.

More than 2,300 firefighters and medical personnel were involved in the operation, and 12 firefighters were among the 79 injured, Mr Yeung said. One firefighter was also killed, he said previously.

The apartment complex of eight 31-storey buildings in Tai Po district, a suburb near the border with mainland China, was built in the 1980s and had been undergoing a major renovation. It had almost 2,000 apartments and 4,800 residents.

Three men — the directors and an engineering consultant of a construction company — were arrested on Thursday on suspicion of manslaughter, and police said company leaders were suspected of gross negligence.

Police have not identified the company where the suspects worked, but documents posted to the homeowners association’s website showed that the Prestige Construction & Engineering Company was in charge of renovations. Police have seized boxes of documents from the company.

Authorities suspected some materials on the exterior walls of the buildings did not meet fire resistance standards, allowing the unusually fast spread of the fire.

Police said they found highly flammable plastic foam panels attached to the windows on each floor of the one unaffected tower. The panels were believed to have been installed by the construction company but the purpose was not clear.

Preliminary investigations showed the fire started on a lower-level scaffolding net on one of the buildings, then spread rapidly as the foam panels caught fire, said Mr Tang.

“The blaze ignited the foam panels, causing the glass to shatter and leading to a swift intensification of the fire and its spread into the interior spaces,” he added.

Authorities plans immediate inspections of housing complexes undergoing major renovations to ensure scaffolding and construction materials meet safety standards.

The fire was the deadliest in Hong Kong in decades. A 1996 blaze in a commercial building in Kowloon killed 41 people, and warehouse fire in 1948 killed 176, according to the South China Morning Post.