Fire Safety
Hong Kong simply hasn’t developed the right mindset with respect to fire safety. Unless prompt effective action is taken, we could be looking at more tragedies like the recent Tai Po disaster.
The numbers are stark, and overwhelming. Yet the context within which they were derived is even more frightening. Over a two-month period in January and February this year, the Fire Services Department inspected some 1,500 residential and mixed-use buildings at least 39 years old. The exercise resulted in 2,500 fire hazard abatement notices being issued, 1,200 summonses and 75 prosecutions. Some buildings had skipped routine annual maintenance checks. Specifically, 53 buildings had fire alarms with safety issues, and 53 had defects in hosepipe and reel systems. No fewer than 18 had both.
These numbers would have been bad enough if they had arisen in the same months in 2025. But they came just weeks after the Wang Fuk Court fire last November which resulted in 168 deaths and 5,000 residents being rendered homeless. Having seen those appalling numbers and watched the flames light up the night sky, the management organisations in 88 buildings couldn’t even bring themselves to fix the fire alarms and fire hoses. What were they thinking? And how many more such cases are out there waiting to be found?
Nor did the Wang Fuk Court case occur in a vacuum. In 2024 a fire in New Lucky House in Yaumati killed five.
The government must also carry its share of responsibility. Several departments work in matters with a bearing on fire safety. Fire services of course, but also the Home Affairs Department responsible for engendering development of effective owners’ management organisations, the Housing Bureau’s Independent Checking Unit inspecting building safety, the Labour Department for dealing with complaints of workers smoking and so on. Have they all been aggressively pursuing their responsibilities? Could they have done more?
The Independent Committee of Inquiry into the Taipo fire has been holding public hearings, and the testimony has not always been reassuring. It would not be right to pre-empt the Committee’s final conclusions as more hearings would be held and a reasonable time will be required for measured consideration of all the evidence. But one headline in this newspaper “Building chiefs slammed for mechanical mindset” and one in the Singapore Straits Times “Not our responsibility: Govt agencies deny accountability in HK’s deadly fire” give a fair sense of the flavour at least as seen by media observers.
Part of the blame may lie with low morale in the workforce in both the public and private sectors. A recent survey of Hong Kong workplace wellbeing conducted on behalf of insurance company AIA reported an overall happiness score of only 65 out of 100. Nearly eight out of 10 respondents reported feeling "emotionally exhausted", "overly tired" or "significantly demotivated at work" over the past month. "Heavy workload and long working hours" and "poor work‑life balance" were generally cited as the leading causes of fatigue and depression.
We must look to heads of department in the government to take the lead in boosting morale of the civil servants they manage by giving them clear directions and full support. Ministers should also be examining their own role in securing improved morale and performance in the departments for which they carry political responsibility.
Sometimes major bureaucratic surgery will be required. A highly critical consultant report of Hong Kong’s investment promotion work in 2000 resulted in the disestablishment of the Industry Department and the creation of a new organisation InvestHK. It adopted a proactive approach instead of a reactive one with working practices and targets geared to modern economic reality. Within three years, with many of the same personnel, it was rated the best investment promotion agency in Asia and continues to do good work today.
In the private sector, senior management must assume the same set of duties.
Looking to the future there is much to be done. The fire services department will continue its inspection regime for two more years. The Security Bureau together with the Fire Services Department is conducting an overhaul of fire safety regulations. The consultation paper just issued says the proposed amendments seek to improve public safety by enhancing regulatory coherence, enforcement effectiveness and accountability. We must also look to the Home Affairs Bureau to ensure that for every building, whether in single or multiple ownership, there is a suitable management organisation in place with proper guidelines and direct advice and assistance from relevant departments. No doubt in due course the Committee of Inquiry will have many useful recommendations, and these must be adopted and implemented with all due speed.
But there is something more: the general public must be made more aware of the issue and the avenues for making suggestions and raising complaints. One of the saddest parts of the evidence given to the Committee shows that in all too many instances reports were made to the relevant departments but not actioned. Rather, they disappeared into a bureaucratic black hole. All too often the member of the public was fobbed off with a reply that a different department was responsible, or that action would be taken in due course.
Thie is an area where district councillors and our local politicians have an important role to play. In addition to forwarding their own suggestions and complaints they must ensure that there is proper machinery in place to deal properly with those coming directly from members of the public, who are after all their constituents. Demanding accountability strengthens society and represents backing for national security, not its opposite.