Name: Three days of mourning begins after 128 killed in Hong Kong apartment fire | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-11-29T17:00:48.000Z
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Turn our attention to Hong Kong now where three days of mourning are underway following a deadly fire that engulfed a residential block on Wednesday.

Basic passive voice

So far, 128 people are known to have died.

We can show you the scene there live now.

The Disaster Victims Identification Unit has entered the site to assist in search and rescue and to confirm the identities of the deceased.

The Authorities say around 200 people are still missing in the last few hours.

Hong Kong's leader and top government officials stood in silence for three minutes at 8am local time and flags have been flown at half mast.

Paul Marriott worked as a teacher at Luo Ting Pong Secondary School.

I will just kind of go through what went down.

So I teach a technology subject at the school and we do have quite a few little fires and little smokes coming out of the hill from time to time.

What happens is sometimes there are little bushfires, sometimes people drop like lit cigarettes and sometimes people will burn sacrifices and stuff to their idols.

So what happened was I was having a lesson.

I was doing my curriculum stuff in my room at the school in Taipo.

And I walked outside just to stretch my legs and I had about three of my students say to me, Mr.

Marriott, Mr. Marriott, there's all that smoke.

And I looked around and I, I saw all this smoke.

It looked like it was emanating from the mountain, from the hill.

And I just kind of figured it's no big deal.

It's like someone probably just started a little fire.

They're burning leaves and what have you.

And then it wasn't until I went back to my homeroom that I got a message from my wife saying, oh, there's been a building fire in Taipo.

And I thought, oh my gosh, it must be that fire.

And I went out and the smoke was billowing even more.

There was literally a path of smoke in the air from our school which was about 15 to 20 minutes walk away from the one foot court.

You decided to go and have a look, didn't you?

So I got off work about 4:15 and I kind of made a beeline towards the smoke and you couldn't miss it for the world.

It's actually, there's a place near the train station which has a view of the One Foot Court.

And there were literally loads of people taking photos and taking videos and two things.

Lots of people and it was just extremely surreal, what we saw.

The building was smoking, it was burning.

We couldn't do anything except just watch.

And what I had just witnessed, you know, of my 14, 15 years of working in Taipo, it's one of the most horrific things that.

And, you know, being a Hong Konger, being born here and, you know, living here most of my life, it really, really hits home.

My heart really goes out to all the victims.

You know, we're now in the third day and.

A number of years ago, we had a fire here in London.

The Grenfell Tower fire, you probably heard about.

Was watching the flames going up the side of the building and all this.

The issues with the cladding, this flammable cladding, and

looking at the images there of Hong Kong the last few days, it's really been striking that that's almost a similarity of the way the fire was spreading up the side of the building.

And as we were talking about with our correspondent before we came to you, there's issues everyone talking about the bamboo scaffolding and this green sheeting almost, isn't it?

So tell me what people have been saying about that and their concerns.

Well, it's like there's been a lot of debate online about it.

You know, we're now into the third day or even the fourth day.

I mean, bamboo scaffolding has been used for many, many years in Hong Kong, as long as we've been alive, so to speak.

And we've never really had a great deal of cases or news reports of bamboo scaffolding all of a sudden igniting and making the fire even worse.

So, you know, there may have been a time where I might have mentioned that maybe bamboo scaffolding, you know, sort of fueled the fire, but

Well, let's speak now to our correspondent Joyce Lee, who joins us now live from Hong Kong.

Can you talk us through what is happening there right now at the moment?

So right now, I am surrounded by people from, you know, different neighborhoods are coming here to this community.

People are wearing black outfits and bringing flowers and paying respect.

And a lot of people are in tears and still in disbelief that there is this kind of deadly tragedy could happen in Hong Kong.

And a lot of people are demanding the government to start, you know, an independent investigation into the case, especially if there's corruption behind.

Why is the construction companies using, you know, foam boards to cover up the windows, which led to the flames going up so quickly and residents were not able to escape in time.

And also it was reported that some construction workers turn off the alarm bell for their convenience.

And that also led to, you know, the really devastating death toll.

So, yes, some of the fire alarms in the building had been switched off.

Did you say that it's the foam boards on the windows that people are blaming for the spread rather than, as I was talking to you with that eyewitness, talking about the bamboo and the netting on the outside of the apartment, are you saying that people are blaming more this boarding that was on the windows?

Yes, because the foam board are clearly flammable.

Hong Kong has been using bamboo scaffolding for decades or even hundreds of years.

And we built the whole city with bamboo scaffolding.

And people don't really think that bamboo is the one to blame.

Instead, it's the foam boarding and also the misbehavior of the construction companies and know, alleged corruption behind the scene.

And actually, the one of the construction companies was, you know, had a lot of track record of, you know, you know, bad dealings behind the scene.

And people are questioning why, you know, why are they allowing this kind of company to, you know, continue doing all this grand construction work, you know, around different places in Hong Kong.

And people are worried that the same kind of tragedy would happen in other neighborhoods as well.

So there is a citywide inspection in different construction sites right now, and

some of the sites are taking down the safety nets, the, you know, nettings as well as foam boards.

So people are, you know, closely monitoring what would be the investigative, you know, reports from the government.

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Three days of mourning begins after 128 killed in Hong Kong apartment fire | BBC News

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