Hong Kong fire death toll rises to 159, including 1-year-old baby

The death toll in Hong Kong apartment complex fire The number of people rose to 159 on Wednesday, when six people were arrested on suspicion of disabling some fire alarms during maintenance work at the housing complex, authorities said.

The youngest person who died in the fire was a 1-year-old baby, police said. The oldest was 97 years old. At least 91 women and 41 men were among the dead, according to Police Commissioner Joe Chow.

Police said they have completed a search for bodies inside seven of the eight high-rise residential towers devastated by the fire that started last Wednesday and took until Friday to be extinguished. About 30 people were still missing.

“We have found 159 bodies, of which 140 were preliminarily identified,” Chow told reporters at a news conference, describing the information as a “provisional summary” after the completion of searches in the buildings.

Chow said officials will continue searching through the piles of fallen bamboo scaffolding to check whether there are remains or bodies buried there, adding: “We have not finished our work yet.”

He also said that officers had found “suspected human bones” in the rubble, which needed to undergo forensic testing, so the death toll could still rise.

He a deadly fire broke out at Wang Fuk Court in the northern suburban district of Tai Po, which was undergoing a months-long renovation project with buildings covered in bamboo scaffolding and green netting.

Police and the city’s anti-corruption agency said on Tuesday they had arrested 15 people as authorities investigate corruption and negligence in connection with the renovation work. Substandard nylon plastic netting covering scaffolding erected outside the towers and foam panels installed on windows were found to have contributed to the rapid spread of the fire, authorities said earlier this week.

Chris Tang, Hong Kong’s security secretary, said police are investigating the Binzhou Testing and Inspection Center in China, which provided the security inspection certificate for the construction network.

In the meantime, the city will remove all external scaffolding networks from ongoing renovations, Tang said. It will be necessary to test the materials before allowing them to be installed again.

In addition to the scaffolding problem, residents and officials have said that some fire alarms in the buildings did not sound when the fire broke out, although it was unclear how widespread that problem was within the complex.

Police said Wednesday that six people who allegedly disabled some fire alarms at the housing complex during renovation work were arrested on suspicion of making false statements to the fire department.

The initial cause of the fire was still under investigation.

Nineteen bodies of the 159 were still unidentified, police said. Among those killed in the fire were ten immigrants who worked as maids at the housing complex, including nine from Indonesia and one from the Philippines, as well as a firefighter.