Tower of tragedy Grief and anger after deadly blaze

With the devastating fire extinguished but many people still unaccounted for, questions are being raised of the city's authorities

- Helen Davidson and Shanshan Kao HONG KONG

For almost 48 hours, Mr Lau had been calling his cousin.

Last Wednesday afternoon Lau was at his home nearby when he saw smoke from Mei Lan's building. Mei Lan, her husband and their children live in the Wang Fuk Court high-rise apartment complex in northern Hong Kong. Shortly after lunchtime that day, a fire started in one of its eight high-rise towers, and quickly spread to six others. It burned for more than two days, killing at least 151 people - a number expected to rise.

The inferno has been compared to London's Grenfell Tower disaster in 2017. Not just for the scale, but for the now rampant questions about negligent safety standards and corruption, amid revelations that the construction site had been inspected 16 times for safety concerns and allegedly had a history of violations.

Late last Friday, Mei Lan still was not answering Lau's calls.

"I'm worried she might have fainted from the heat and can't hear [the phone]," Lau told the Guardian.

"People have died now; of course I hope she can make it out, but there is no contact... The whole family, five or six people, is missing." Officially, Mei Lan and her family were among those unaccounted for.

Lau was accompanied by two friends, and the three elderly men were keeping each other upbeat and optimistic.

It was hard to stay hopeful. The small children's playground where Lau spoke to the Guardian is next to a community centre through which families of victims walked to identify the dead.

Once firefighters could finally access the upper floors, there was a steady stream of people leaving the building, often in floods of tears.

Outside a local school, repurposed as an evacuation shelter, another man sobbed. His parents lived in the towers and were missing.