Tai Po fire ‘a result of multiple layers of human failure’, hearing told

An independent committee investigating Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades will hear concluding remarks from the government on Thursday as the final round of hearings on the tragedy continues.

The legal representative for nine residents of the fire-ravaged Wang Fuk Court housing estate in Tai Po will also deliver a concluding statement before the judge-led panel on the second last session of the three-day hearing.

Committee chairman Justice David Lok Kai-hong said the government’s closing statement was more than 400 pages long. The committee’s statement – which is expected to be delivered on Friday – runs to more than 600 pages.

The fire, which broke out at the estate on November 26, 2025, and lasted for 43 hours, killed 168 people and displaced 5,000.

The deadliest blaze in Hong Kong since 1948 occurred during a HK$336 million renovation project at the estate, after homeowners voted to pick the most expensive option, drawing suspicions of bid-rigging.

In Wednesday’s session, the committee heard accounts from lawyers for Wang Fuk Court’s management company, ISS EastPoint, the Urban Renewal Authority, the Competition Commission and Leung Ping-kay, a director of fire safety equipment contractor China Status Development and Engineering.

It also received written submissions from the estate’s fire service installation annual inspection contractor, Victory Fire and Engineering, and the management committee of Wang Fuk Court’s owners’ corporation at the time of fire.

The committee previously heard that the fire alarm system was switched off at the time of the blaze, and that an ISS technician had admitted turning off the main switches controlling both the alarms and the firefighting pump when he was helping renovation contractor Prestige Construction and Engineering to drain firefighting water tanks.

Martin Ho Cheuk-hang, a lawyer representing ISS, said it was “pitiful” that the technician, who was not qualified, had turned off the switch, but the main problems lay in the absence of staff from China Status, the fire services contractor hired by Prestige, as well as Victory Fire’s failure to report irregularities.

Leung from China Status had earlier admitted the company had acted as a “rubber stamp” for Prestige to file shutdown notices on fire services installations.

His counsel, Aaron Chan Chi-lung, had suggested that other factors, such as the use of polyfoam boards to block windows and compromised evacuation routes, had contributed to the heavy death toll, while the deactivation of the fire alarm system was not the sole reason for the casualties.

Lok slammed the comments as “hardly acceptable”.

Follow the South China Morning Post’s live coverage as the hearing continues.

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