“They just wanted to make money at the expense of people’s lives,” said Hong Kong Chief Secretary Eric Chan, as he explained how inferior materials that were hidden in places that could hardly be checked were the factors that led to the deadliest fire in the city in decades. The fire that spread through the seven of eight 31-story towers of the Wang Court housing complex in Tai Po killed at least151 residents, and there are dozens of people whose whereabouts are unknown.
From the investigation findings, the fire started on bamboo scaffolding on a lower-level that was covered with nylon mesh. After that, the fire went upward and to the buildings next to it. This is because the highly flammable polystyrene foam panels that were used to cover the windows caught fire, and the glass then exploded. The fire was able to spread quickly because of the wind, and thus, the outside scaffolding was able to be used as a kind of chimney for the fire that went up vertically.
Although there is a plan to phase it out gradually, bamboo scaffolding is still commonly used in Hong Kong. People chose it for their buildings when doing construction in a tight area of a city because it is cheap and very adaptable. On the other hand, the fact that it is also highly flammable is known to everyone. One of the experts, Xinyan Huang from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, has pointed out that the risk of fire in dry situations is “very high,” and the speed of fire spread is “super-fast,” particularly when the poles are vertically oriented. The bamboo in this incident was covered with netting, and according to Chan, the fire-retardant standard was not met by seven out of the twenty samples that were tested. At first, inspections indicated that the installation was up to standard, but after repeated testing in places that are hard to get to, it was found that cheaper, unsafe netting had been intentionally put in without taking the place of the original ones.
The polystyrene foam panels that were installed on the windows of each floor made the situation more dangerous than before. Researches of expanded polystyrene (EPS) and extruded polystyrene foam (XPS) insulation indicate that without layers of protective material that are fire-rated, these products can catch fire very quickly, soften at once, and for drippings, the smallest parts are on fire. For example, under a heat flux of 50 kW/m², EPS can be set on fire in as short as 17 seconds time, and pyrolysis gases which are very dense are produced from which the combustion can be sustained. To make the situation worse, polystyrene panels release high-intensity carbon dioxide peak heat emissions – for example, panels without foil can go up to 442 kW/m² – and produce a lot of deadly smoke, including carbon monoxide (CO), which may suffocate people before they manage to get out of the building.
The use of highly combustible bamboo scaffolds together with the most inflammable material for the house wrapped with plastic and the failure of fire alarms had by far exhausted the available fire-fighting strategies. In the case of the spreading of fire very fast at the outer side of a high-rise building, the usual “stay-put” method intended for people to find refuge in smoke-free stairwells may not function as the fire may enter the flats directly from outside thus residents face danger even more than before. Such a phenomenon took place during the Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017 and, additionally, other cases around the world, where cobalt was the cause for the fire to spread further bypassing the compartments. Hence at Wang Court, the fire was battled for almost a day by more than 2,300 firefighters and medics, but it was too late as the flames had already broken in several blocks.
In Hong Kong, engineering regulations stipulate that protective nets, screens, and tarpaulins used on scaffolding must have “adequate fire retardant characteristics in conformity with a recognized standard.” Still, the authority had a problem with applying the law strictly. Since July 2024, the Labour Department had been following up on the renovation work actively, having made 16 inspections and issuing official warnings from a variety of safety-related perspectives, one being the week just before the tragedy when the most recent warning was written. The residents also said everywhere that they had been complaining about the netting for almost a year.
The arrests so far, thirteen people, including the directors of Prestige Construction & Engineering, a subcontractor for scaffolding, and an engineering consultant indicate that the police have strong suspicions about the corrupt practices. In their investigation, the police found evidence that the mixing of the netting types was done by the contractors who were also cutting the spots where non-compliant netting had been put so that only officers passing on fire-fighting missions could see them, thus they avoided detection during regular inspections. Besides, the police have also taken some documents and bank records related to the case as they dig in further.
Similar incidents have been followed by the imposition of prohibitive measures for the use of certain materials that may cause fires in the exterior part of buildings in various parts of the world. One of such initiatives was held by the U.K. Government who, after the Grenfell fire, stopped the usage of highly flammable cladding in any new structures and provided an £8.1 billion plan for remediation. China’s main land decided to end the usage of bamboo scaffolding and encouraged the adoption of non-combustible steel or aluminum ones. However, while Hong Kong’s March order that mandated metal scaffolding for half of the new public works projects was aimed at ensuring the safety of workers, the tragic accident in Tai Po has considerably shifted the focus to potential fire hazards.
Different fire cases which are used as a reference show that even when there are fire-resistant foil layers on polystyrene panels, the situation gets worse after the layers are damaged or the parts collapse as the fire quickly finds its way to the highly flammable inner part thus the rapid spreading of the fire. Most probably the vertical arrangement is the one as usually, high-rise buildings are the most common structures where facades are oriented in this way. Here, the ignition takes place a lot quicker, and the molten bits very often fall down making the lower levels follow suit, however, this time it is not the same one for the eyewitnesses as they say the flaming debris came down from Wang Court which was the upper stories.
The authorities have halted 30 other projects that were under the same contractor’s management as well as the government has declared the immediate inspection of all the significant renovation works in the area. But the extent of the risk is not certain as there are some whistle-blowers who say that there are similar problems with scaffolding and cladding at some other housing complexes. Without strict implementation of the law and open material audits, the engineering mistakes which turned a small ignition into a fire disaster that affected several buildings may happen again.
