Major fire rages at Hong Kong housing estate [video]

by busymom0 • 8 months ago

3 5 8 months ago

johng• 8 months ago

Man, never seen anything like that in my life. I have seen the bamboo scaffolding but didn't think anything quite that bad could happen.

How likely is anything like this to happen in the US? I mean besides the scaffolding... haven't seen so many buildings go up half done here in my life.

Edit: From some of the video and photos I can't believe some of the buildings haven't collapsed as well.

xwolfi2• 8 months ago

They used styrofoam cardboards to cover windows to avoid damange, all the way across the building. This was the accelerant. Many resident were complaining in the weeks before of cigarettes left behind by workers all across the scaffold, probably the trigger. The bamboo might have acted as fuel once the temperature reached high enough, and the whole green netting might not have been up to code either.

The whole thing is typical in HK: everyone tries to save a dollar on everything, and you end up with mess like that. They spent years haggling over this renovation and its cost, and probably tried to save money on everything. Now they lost their flats, their lives and their pride.

They will resort to blame "the mainland" for it for sure, but it's just stinginess: the choice of the cheapest contractor, the squeeze on any attempt to pay the fair cost of a work like that, the government mandating mandatory renovations everywhere all the time, the lack of skilled labor in construction because nobody wants to do it or import and train foreigners because that'd spoil their precious island, whatever.

And now we're going through the whole charity theatrics with everyone congratulating each other for bringing biscuits to people who'll spend 10 years in insurance litigation to get 20% of their assets back. What really hurts me the most is we lost a young firefighter, this is heartbreaking more than the rest to me for some reason.

You can follow in English a bit here:

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/33...

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/3334435/...

fragmede• 8 months ago

The HSBC building in 1935 is considered Hong Kong's first skyscraper, but the boom didn't come until after WWII, but so the real question is how hasn't this happened before in the past ninety years? Sheer luck, or something else?

Major fire rages at Hong Kong housing estate [video]

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