The high number of deaths as a result of last November’s Tai Po flames it was “completely avoidable”, the experts concluded. A public inquiry has heard that more than half of the 168 victims died of smoke inhalation and that the fire alarms were set off due to human error.
The independent committee investigating the city’s deadliest fire in decades resumed its hearings on Monday after a week-long break, as two experts testified on the cause of the fire and the factors that led to the loss of life at the Wang Fuk Court apartment complex.
After the blaze, the government set up an inter-departmental investigative task force. Separately, the independent committee appointed its own experts to investigate the causes and circumstances that led to the tragedy.
Victor Dawes, the committee’s chief adviser, said Monday that the two teams of experts worked independently of each other but reached “largely similar” conclusions, according to local media reports.
Citing expert reports, Dawes said 91 victims died of hot smoke inhalation. During the fire, toxic gases spread quickly inside the buildings as fire resistant windows have been replaced with wooden planks on the emergency stairs, he said.
The renovation contractor used wooden planks as entry-exit points for workers to access the bamboo scaffolding, the inquest previously heard. Wang Fuk Court was undergoing major repair work at the time of the fire.
Dawes said that, during fire simulation tests conducted by the government’s investigative team in Sichuan, the temperature in the emergency stairwells reached more than 600 degrees Celsius when the fireproof windows were replaced.
With the fireproof windows in place, temperatures dropped to 56 degrees Celsius during the tests, Dawes said.
‘Zero’ time to evacuate
Experts also identified foam boards used to protect windows from falling debris and disabled fire alarms as factors that prevented the residents from escaping, since many of them were not notified in time about the flames.
“The time allowed for evacuation was practically zero,” Dawes said.
Lam Kin-kwan, a deputy fire chief and deputy head of the government’s investigative task force, told the inquiry that the fire spread to the roof of the Wang Cheong house about 15 minutes after it first broke out in a first-floor light well at about 2:43 p.m.
When firefighters arrived at the scene at 2:56 p.m., the fire was already spreading upward “exponentially,” he said, adding that a large amount of combustible building materials stored on the roof had contributed to the fire’s rapid spread.
Lee Wing-man, chief chemist at the government laboratory’s forensic science department, said most samples from temporary protective nets stored at Wang Fuk Court at the time of the fire failed fire resistance tests.
She also said that the government investigation team has found smoking as the most likely cause of fire as other possibilities are excluded.
Sessions will resume on Wednesday. Government-appointed expert Richard Yuen, a professor of architectural engineering at the City University of Hong Kong, is expected to testify.
