Tai Po, Hong Kong: Grief-stricken and angry, Mrs Kwok wants answers as she stares in disbelief at the charred remains of her apartment complex where so many of her neighbours died.
She was at work and her son was at daycare when an inferno tore through seven of the eight blocks at the Wang Fuk Court apartment complex in Hong Kong’s Tai Po neighbourhood on Wednesday.
It burned with such ferocity that it took hundreds of fire crews two days to extinguish.
“I am very, very angry because the alarms didn’t go off,” said Kwok, 36, sobbing as she returned to the building site with her young son to pay her respects to the victims.
“Many of the older people would have been sleeping. The windows were sealed. They wouldn’t have heard anything and it was so far to climb down.”
Residents had complained about the renovations in the 40-year-old towers, and they had requested they be done one at a time, Kwok said, declining to give her full name.
“The management office rejected the demands. Residents asked the TV stations to report on this, but still the pressure didn’t work,” she says.
“It’s a major cause of why the fire happened.”
Huge crowds lay flowers to pay tribute to the victims of the Tai Po fire. Credit: Daniel Ceng
As forensic workers continued the grim process of retrieving bodie
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