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Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in more than half a century has spotlighted its risky use of flammable bamboo scaffolding and mesh for building work in a tradition dating back centuries to mainland China.

While the origin of the blaze is still unclear, there was no hiding the ease with which the fire rapidly spread across the green netting and sent bamboo lattices crashing to the ground in flames. Dozens have been confirmed killed and dozens more were missing on Thursday morning.

For decades in the skyscraper-strewn former British colony, bamboo has been the material of choice for scaffolding – cheap, abundant and flexible – bound together with nylon cords.

The craft originated on mainland China where bamboo, viewed as symbolising grace and moral fortitude, has since ancient times been a cornerstone of architecture, even reputedly used for scaffolding and tools in the building of the Great Wall.

Now, though, it has largely been phased out there for sturdier metal scaffolding and clamps. But Hong Kong, despite its modernity, still has around 2500 registered bamboo scaffolding masters plying their trade, according to official figures.

The number of metal scaffolders is about triple that. Small teams of scaffolders scrambling up vertiginous, gleaming facades to sheathe a building in a matter of weeks is an iconic sight in the global financial hub.

The bamboo lattices are also often used alongside green construction mesh to prevent debris from injuring passers-by, as was the case in the tower blocks at the Wang Fuk Court housing complex in Hong Kong’s northern Tai Po district.

Hong Kong’s leader John Lee said a task force had been set up to investigate the cause of the blaze.

“Buildings Departments’ independent review unit will investigate whether the building’s exterior walls meet the fire retardant standard,” he told a press conference.

“If there’s any wrongdoing, we’ll pursue accountability in accordance with laws and regulations.”

Hong Kong secretary for security Chris Tang said preliminary investigations had found that the rapid spread of the fire was suspicious, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported.

“We have found that on the relevant building walls, the netting and waterproof tarpaulin material, once burned, showed spreading of the flames faster than [they should on] regulated materials. This is unusual,” he said.

The city’s director of fire services Andy Yeung Yan-kin also said that officers had discovered styrofoam inside the burning buildings.

He said that caused the fire to spread more rapidly within the blocks and ignite flats via the corridors, the Post reported. The fire chief said officers were only able to enter the buildings from the ground floor and that the number of floors that were on fire presented a major difficulty.

With 44 confirmed killed, the blaze is now the deadliest in Hong Kong in 63 years, surpassing the 1996 Kowloon fire in which 41 died in a commercial building.

The 44 deaths match the number of people killed in a fire in the coastal Sham Shui Po district of Hong Kong in August 1962. That blaze started in an area where paper and joss-sticks were stored and then spread to fireworks, according to the South China Morning Post.

Lee on Thursday said the Hong Kong government would take special action against ongoing projects, checking whether scaffolding mesh materials meet fire-retardant standards and other safety standards.

In March, the government said 50 per cent of new public works contracts would be required to use metal scaffolding going forward.

But the emphasis appeared to be more on worker safety rather than fire risks. There were 22 deaths involving bamboo scaffolders between 2019 and 2024, according to official figures.

Despite the safety push, Hong Kong’s secretary for labour Chris Sun said in July that “the government has no intention to ban the use of bamboo scaffolds at the moment”.

In October, a massive bamboo scaffolding caught fire at the Chinachem Tower in the city centre. Again, fire consumed construction netting and bamboo poles, leaving windows burnt out and external walls badly seared.

The Association for the Rights of Industrial Accident Victims in Hong Kong said in a Facebook post that there had been at least two other fires involving bamboo scaffolding this year.

Protective nets, screens and tarpaulin or plastic sheeting installed on the face of scaffolding “should have appropriate fire retardant properties in compliance with a recognised standard”, says the Hong Kong Labour Department’s Code of Practice for Bamboo Scaffolding Safety.

Jason Poon, a whistle-blower who has previously exposed shoddy construction work in Hong Kong, said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that fire-hazard risks existed in scaffolding at many housing complexes.

He said he had reached out to various government departments last year concerning the lack of fire retardant in scaffolding nets at another complex, but he was ignored. Reuters received no immediate response from the fire, buildings and labour departments to a request to comment.

Reuters

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