Anti-corruption agency arrests 8 over Hong Kong’s tower fire

Hong Kong’s anti-corruption agency said on Friday it arrested eight people connected to the renovation of the high-rise apartments that were engulfed in a massive fire that left 128 people dead. The seven men and one woman, from 40 to 63 years old, include scaffolding subcontractors, directors of an engineering consultant company and project managers supervising the renovation, the Independent Commission Against Corruption said in a statement.

The agency also searched its offices on Friday and seized relevant documents and bank records. The investigation into possible corruption in the renovation project was launched on Thursday after the fatal fire broke out. Hong Kong firefighters searched through a high-rise tower complex apartment-by-apartment Friday for more victims after a massive fire engulfed seven of its eight buildings, killing at least 128 people in one of the city’s deadliest blazes.

Crews were prioritising apartments from which they received more than two dozen calls for assistance during the blaze, but were unable to reach, Derek Armstrong Chan, a deputy director of Hong Kong Fire Services, told reporters. The toll rose Friday afternoon to 128 after more bodies were found in the blackened towers, and Secretary for Security Chris Tang told reporters at the scene that the search for victims was continuing and the numbers could still rise.

The fire started midafternoon Wednesday in one of the Wang Fuk Court complex’s eight towers, jumping rapidly from one to the next as bamboo scaffolding covered in netting in place for renovations caught ablaze until seven buildings were engulfed. It took more than 1,000 firefighters, some 24 hours to bring the blaze under control, and even nearly two days later, smoke continued to drift out of the charred skeletons of the buildings from the occasional flare-up.

The final search of the buildings was expected to be completed later Friday, at which point officials have said they will officially end the rescue phase of their operation at the complex in Tai Po district. Volunteers distribute donated supplies following the fire that started on Wednesday at Wang Fuk Court, a residential estate in the Tai Po district of Hong Kong's New Territories.