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Contractor tells Hong Kong inquiry fire alarms would not have saved lives
At Wang Fuk Court, the committee heard the first building to catch fire on Nov. 26 had less than 10 minutes to escape even with prompt alerts, after the blaze killed 168 people.
A contractor involved in fire-safety work told an independent committee overseeing Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court disaster that residents would have had too little time to escape even if the estate’s fire alarms had been functioning during last year’s inferno, drawing sharp questioning from the judge, SCMP Economy reports.
Legal counsel for a director at fire service contractor China Status Development and Engineering said that for people in the first building to catch fire on Nov. 26, the window to escape would have been less than 10 minutes even with immediate warning, according to SCMP Economy.
The committee heard closing speeches as interested parties presented arguments on the causes and circumstances of the tragedy, which killed 168 people and left nearly 5,000 homeless. It also considered proposals from the Urban Renewal Authority and the Competition Commission aimed at curbing anticompetitive conduct in the construction industry, including criminalising bid-rigging and strengthening the authority’s role in vetting tenders.
SCMP Economy said the deadliest blaze in Hong Kong since 1948 burned for about 43 hours, and that the HK$336 million renovation project involved bamboo scaffolding and mesh around all eight buildings. Experts previously identified combustible construction materials and the deactivation of fire safety systems as contributing factors to the rapid spread of flames across seven of the eight residential blocks.