HONG KONG (China Daily/ANN): At least seven people, including a 9-year-old boy, were killed in Hong Kong's deadliest fire in nearly a decade as flames leapt in a four-storey building in Jordan on Sunday evening (Nov 15).
Firefighters arrived at the scene, near the junction of Canton Road and Saigon Street in Jordan, at 8:42 pm, three minutes after they had received a call. The blaze was largely put out within eight minutes, Fire Services Department officers said. Police said 30 people had been evacuated from the building.
In all, 18 people, mostly of Nepalese ethnicity, were rushed to hospitals, while four male and three female persons between 9 and 40 died at hospitals, authorities said at a joint press briefing in the early hours of Monday. The deceased are believed to be related to each other.
Fire services officers said a family get-together was on at a 75-sq-metre unit where the fire broke out. Police said they were investigating whether the unit was being used as an unlicensed Nepalese restaurant.
Some of the injured people were found trapped in a kitchen inside the unit, and some had escaped through a washroom window. They were taken to nearby Kwong Wah and Queen Elizabeth hospitals, Caritas Medical Centre in Sham Shui Po and Princess Margaret Hospital in Kwai Tsing.
In a midnight statement, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said she was “deeply saddened” at the tragedy, adding that she had instructed the relevant departments to find out the cause of the fire and the heavy casualty.
On Nov 4,2011, a fire at a building on Fa Yuen Street in Mong Kok killed nine people and injured 34. It was later classified as an accident. - China Daily/Asia News Network
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