Survivors 'There should have been an alarm. It was a horrible, huge fire'

More than 24 hours after the first tower caught fire, the Hong Kong residential complex was still burning.

- Helen Davidson

Fire crews blasted water from cherry pickers at the mid-level floors, but above that, the fires were still roaring out of reach.

Wang Fuk Court, in the northern Hong Kong district of Tai Po, was home to about 4,800 people. The eight-tower complex had been under renovation for years, clad in bamboo scaffolding and mesh.

On Wednesday afternoon, for reasons that are under investigation, one of them caught fire. The blaze spread inside the building, and then across to neighbouring towers. By evening, seven buildings were ablaze, and the death toll had already surpassed Hong Kong's worst ever building fire disaster.

Firefighters were still unable to reach the top levels of some of the 31-storey towers, although one elderly man was rescued alive from his high-up apartment earlier in the day.

The air was still filled with acrid smoke, which reminded some of how the city smelled during the worst violence of the 2019 protests.

A brief panic broke out when a flickering light in the window of a different block was mistaken for another fire, and onlookers exchanged nervous looks when the breeze picked up: Wednesday's fire was fanned by a stiff winter northerly, said James Tang, who lived in one of the towers.