The fire started as a single column of smoke curling above a renovation platform in Hong Kong’s Tai Po district. Within minutes it had grown into a vertical sheet of flame that climbed the sides of the Wang Fuk Court apartment towers. By the time the first fire engines arrived, the blaze had already leapt across scaffolding links and begun its push from tower to tower. What followed was a chain of events that turned a renovation site into one of the deadliest building fires Hong Kong has seen in decades.
Authorities have confirmed 44 deaths, while nearly 300 residents remain unaccounted for. Dozens more are in hospital with severe burns and smoke injuries. The search for survivors continues, but the scale of the missing suggests a tragedy still unfolding. Not since the Garley Building fire in 1996, which killed 41 people, has Hong Kong lost so many lives in a single fire incident.
The Wang Fuk Court complex housed several thousand residents. More than 900 people have been evacuated, either from their apartments or from refuge floors where groups had gathered during the worst period of the fire. Yet firefighters admit they still do not know how many remain inside. Whole sections of the buildings are charred, unstable or too dangerous to enter. Search teams describe hallways filled with ash, melted wiring and shattered glass. In several stairwells the heat was strong enough to buckle handrails and warp doors.
For many families watching from cordoned pavements, every update comes with a mix of dread and hope. Phone lines inside the buildings failed early. Some residents may have fled without their devices. Others could be unreachable because smoke and heat forced them to shelter inside sealed rooms. The fire is still burning in pockets, which has slowed rescue teams and made accurate tallies nearly impossible.
A Perfect Storm of Height, Wind and Fuel
The immediate question facing investigators is how a fire in a single apartment block could spread so quickly across a cluster of high-rise towers. The early picture points to a combination of strong wind, flammable scaffolding materials and a dense mesh covering that turned the building exteriors into a ladder for flame.
The towers, each 31 stories tall, were undergoing renovation. Every facade was wrapped in a grid of bamboo scaffolding, tied to the concrete structure with steel brackets and covered in layers of green plastic safety mesh. Under normal conditions this system protects pedestrians below from falling debris and gives workers secure access during repairs. Under fire conditions it becomes a very different story.
Dry bamboo burns quickly, and once alight it behaves like stacked timber. The mesh covering, which often contains polyethylene, melts and drips as it burns. Witnesses described sheets of fire climbing the mesh while sparks showered down over balconies. Once the blaze reached the upper sections of the towers, wind intensified the spread. In Hong Kong’s dense urban environment, wind corridors around residential blocks can channel gusts upward with surprising force. That vertical push appears to have carried the fire past fire doors, refuse rooms and window openings, turning each level into a new point of ignition.
Investigators are now piecing together whether the fire began on a lower platform or inside an apartment where renovation work was underway. What is confirmed is that the spread across the scaffolding was faster than anyone on site expected. Firefighters arriving at the scene reported flames visible on at least ten levels of multiple towers, a pattern that matches rapid upward spread along exterior surfaces.
The Hong Kong Police Force has arrested three construction company executives on suspicion of manslaughter. Officials have not released the specific reasons for the arrests, but they are believed to involve potential negligence related to site safety, scaffolding design or use of materials.
Why High-Rise Fires Become Catastrophic So Quickly
The tragedy has reopened a question that modern cities have wrestled with for decades. Why does evacuating a high-rise building remain so difficult, even in cities with strong building codes and professional fire services?
Physical height is the main limiting factor. When a fire breaks out in a skyscraper or tall housing block, almost all residents must rely on stairwells to reach safety. Under ideal conditions, people can move down stairs at around half a meter per second. But ideal conditions rarely exist in real emergencies. Smoke, noise, confusion and darkness reduce that pace sharply.
During the evacuation of the World Trade Center in 2001, researchers documented descent speeds of less than 0.3 meters per second. Early research has shown similar slowdowns in fires around the world. These numbers may seem small, but over thirty stories they compound into a long and exhausting descent.
Fatigue alone slows crowds. By the tenth floor, many evacuees begin to take breaks. During the 2010 Shanghai high-rise fire, nearly half of older survivors reported that they had to slow down significantly during their descent. Hong Kong has an aging population, which increases the number of residents for whom long stair travel is difficult or impossible.
Congestion adds another layer of risk. Most stairwells in older residential buildings are designed for daily use, not full-building evacuations. When hundreds of people attempt to flow into a single vertical shaft, bottlenecks form. Older individuals, people with mobility challenges and families with small children naturally move at slower speeds. Once slower groups enter the stream, the entire staircase pace adjusts to their speed.
Visibility is another killer. Smoke reduces depth perception and makes people hesitate before each step. Even dim lighting can reduce descent speeds in controlled experiments. In a live fire event, where smoke lowers visibility to a few meters and alarms echo through confined spaces, movement becomes cautious and irregular. This creates sudden stops that ripple upward through crowds like waves.
Perhaps the greatest delays come before people even leave their apartments. Studies of high-rise evacuations show that people rarely move immediately when an alarm sounds. They check hallways, look out of windows, call family members or gather belongings. These actions make sense on a human level. People seek confirmation before committing to a stressful and potentially dangerous action. But in a fast-moving fire, those early minutes are some of the most costly.
In the Tai Po fire, residents reported hearing alarms while also smelling smoke. Some left immediately. Others waited for building announcements or instructions from neighbors. Many families tried to leave together, which is common in residential towers. Group evacuation, however, often reduces the width of movement and slows the overall flow.
As Hong Kong grows taller, with residential towers climbing past 50 floors, these challenges grow sharper. The assumption that everyone can make a full descent to ground level is no longer realistic. This is why many cities have adopted refuge floors: protected levels built into high-rises where residents can gather, rest and await firefighter assistance. Combined with evacuation elevators, which are engineered to function safely during fires, these elements create a layered approach to vertical evacuation.
The Wang Fuk Court towers did have refuge floors, but investigators have not yet confirmed how many residents reached them. Several survivors have said they were directed upward rather than down, because lower stairwells had become filled with smoke.
The Bamboo Question
Beyond the immediate tragedy is a larger, long-running debate about Hong Kong’s use of bamboo scaffolding. The practice has deep cultural roots and continues to be economic and practical. But the Tai Po fire has forced many to ask whether bamboo should still be used around occupied high-rise buildings.
Bamboo is light, strong and flexible. Its use in scaffolding has centuries of precedent. Hong Kong has entire teams of skilled scaffolders who construct complex frames by lashing poles together with nylon ties or natural fiber ropes. The material is inexpensive and easy to transport, especially in tight urban environments where cranes cannot always reach. For routine repainting, facade repairs or short-duration maintenance work, bamboo scaffolding can be assembled quickly and dismantled with minimal impact on the surrounding area.
Environmentally, bamboo has appeal. It grows quickly, regenerates after harvesting and requires little processing before use. Its carbon footprint is far lower than that of metal scaffolding systems that require energy-intensive production.
Yet bamboo also carries two inherent risks. The first is its flammability. Dry bamboo burns easily, especially when stacked in large grids around tall structures. The flames can climb poles like wicks, and the heat can crack or split poles, causing collapse or rapid fire spread. When scaffolds are wrapped in plastic mesh, that covering can ignite and drip burning material onto ledges, air conditioners and open windows.
The second risk is variability. Bamboo’s strength depends on species, age, moisture content and how long it has been dried. Weather can weaken poles or loosen lashings. Windstorms are a regular hazard in Hong Kong, which is why codes require specific diameters, tie spacing, anchoring methods and inspections after heavy weather.
Hong Kong’s Building Department has long maintained strict guidance for bamboo scaffolding, but even strong rules cannot remove all risks when natural materials are used on tall, occupied buildings.
The government has already started moving toward a gradual shift. In March 2025, the Development Bureau mandated that metal scaffolding must be used in at least half of all new public works projects. The goal is not to eliminate bamboo entirely, but to reserve it for lower-risk settings. For tall residential towers, especially those wrapped in mesh during renovation, the fire risk is too high for comfort.
The Tai Po fire will likely accelerate that transition. Calls are growing for mandatory use of flame-retardant mesh, treated bamboo, or fire breaks within scaffolding grids. Safety experts are urging the government to consider whether bamboo should be used at all on structures where thousands of people live only a few meters behind thin exterior walls.
Hours of Chaos and Courage
The most vivid accounts of the fire come from those who escaped it. Survivors describe rooms filling with smoke within minutes. Some residents used wet towels and blankets to seal doors. Others climbed out onto balconies and waited for firefighters to reach them. A few were forced to move to upper floors when smoke pooled in lower stairwells.
Firefighters entered the towers floor by floor, often crawling to survive the heat. Several crews became temporarily trapped when wind shifts caused sudden bursts of flame to sweep down corridors. The protective gear carried by Hong Kong’s firefighters is designed to withstand intense temperatures, but even that equipment has limits.
Families separated during evacuation still do not know whether loved ones made it out. Volunteer shelters in Tai Po Community Hall and nearby schools have been filled with evacuees looking for information. Walls are covered with handwritten notes listing names and phone numbers. Volunteers help coordinate contact attempts, while social workers move through crowds offering support.
Hospitals across the New Territories were placed on emergency footing. Burn units filled quickly. Smoke inhalation became the most common medical issue, especially for children and older adults. Several survivors arrived dehydrated and disoriented after spending hours waiting in refuge floors or sealed apartments.
The fire has forced Hong Kong to confront difficult questions about how it renovates aging buildings and how it prepares residents for evacuation in tall structures. The Wang Fuk Court complex was built in 1983, a period when fire codes were less strict and high-rise design had not yet incorporated many of the safety innovations found in newer towers.
The investigation will look at several fronts:
• the ignition source
• the condition and arrangement of bamboo scaffolding
• the type and condition of the mesh covering
• the speed of fire spread across external surfaces
• the performance of fire alarms, sprinklers and smoke extraction systems
• the design and condition of stairwells and refuge floors
• the adequacy of evacuation guidance from building managers
One of the most pressing questions is why the fire moved faster than expected. External fire spread is an issue that gained global attention after the Grenfell Tower fire in London, where flammable cladding allowed flames to race up the building. The Tai Po fire may add new urgency to Hong Kong’s review of exterior renovation materials and temporary works systems.
A City Built Upward Now Looks Downward in Grief
Hong Kong’s skyline has long been a symbol of ambition, innovation and adaptability. The city built upward when it could not expand outward. It embraced vertical living earlier and more extensively than almost any other place in the world. That choice created new forms of community and new forms of risk. The Tai Po fire is a reminder that as buildings rise, the consequences of failure rise with them.
Bamboo scaffolding helped build that skyline. It is part of Hong Kong’s history and identity. But history alone cannot justify practices that put residents at risk. As the city searches for answers, one principle stands out: use the right tool for the job, and when the job involves tall, occupied homes, the safest tool must come first.
For now, the focus remains on rescue. Firefighters continue to search floor by floor. Families continue to wait for word. The smell of smoke hangs over Tai Po like a shadow that refuses to lift. Hong Kong has experienced disasters before, but this one cuts deeply because it struck people where they should feel safest: at home.
Until the last missing resident is found, the story of this fire remains unresolved. But one truth is already clear. This tragedy will change how Hong Kong builds, renovates and protects its homes. And it will serve as a reminder that in a city of towers, safety must climb as high as the buildings themselves.
