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A fire spread across multiple highrise apartment buildings in a Hong Kong housing complex on Wednesday, killing 13 people and leaving others trapped inside, authorities said.
Nine people were declared dead on the scene and four others who were sent to the hospital were later confirmed dead, Hong Kong’s fire services told reporters. At least 15 others were injured.
About 700 people have been evacuated to temporary shelters, officials said.
Firefighters were on the scene Wednesday as fire engulfed residential buildings in Hong Kong’s northern Tai Po district, with local reports suggesting several people were trapped in the building.
The blaze was reported mid-afternoon and was eventually upgraded to a Level 5 alarm, the highest level of severity, the fire department said.
The fire was still raging late into the night.
“Debris and scaffolding of the affected buildings are falling down,” said Derek Armstrong Chan, deputy director of Fire Services. “The temperature inside the buildings concerned [is] very high. It’s difficult for us to enter the building and go upstairs to conduct firefighting and rescue operations.”
It was not immediately known what caused the fire. Officials said the fire started at the external scaffolding of one of the buildings and later spread to inside the building and also to nearby blocks, likely aided by windy conditions. The department said it received “numerous” calls requesting assistance and some residents remained trapped as of Wednesday night local time.
Video from the scene showed at least five buildings close to each other ablaze, with bright flames and smoke shooting out of many of the apartments’ windows as night fell. Firefighters were aiming water at the intense flames from high up on ladder trucks.
The Wang Fuk housing complex in the city’s Tai Po district was first occupied in 1983, records show, and it now consists of eight blocks of housing and almost 2,000 apartments, housing about 4,800 residents.
The dead included one firefighter and another was being treated for heat exhaustion, Fire Services Department Director Andy Yeung told reporters.
Firefighters deployed 128 fire trucks and 57 ambulances to the scene.
Police said they had received multiple reports of people trapped in the affected buildings, but did not provide details.
Lo Hiu-fung, a Tai Po District Council member, told local TV station TVB earlier Wednesday that most of the residents trapped in the fire were believed to be elderly people.
“I’ve given up thinking about my property,” a resident who only provided his surname, Wu, told TVB. “Watching it burn like that was really frustrating.”
Tai Po is a suburban area in the New Territories, in the northern part of Hong Kong and near the border with the mainland Chinese city of Shenzhen.
Bamboo scaffolding is a common sight in Hong Kong at building construction and renovation projects, though the government said earlier this year that it would start phasing it out for public projects because of safety concerns.