SHEER horror. That was what I felt watching the news on the devastating fire in Hong Kong on Nov 26 that engulfed seven blocks of high-rise apartments. It brought back memories of the 2017 Grenfell inferno in a 24-storey residential tower in London that killed 71 people.
For many experts, both the Wang Fuk Court and the Grenfell Tower disasters have many similarities. The public inquiry for the latter, headed by retired judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick, found that the blaze occurred largely due to incompetence, dishonesty, and greed among government officials, architects, the construction industry, and regulators.
The YouTube documentary on the Wang Fuk Court – also called Tai Po – fire by Truth Decoding titled The Same Mistake: The London Grenfell Tower Fire Warning We Ignored clearly explains that “The ‘Green Monster’ inferno in Hong Kong followed the exact same physics as the Grenfell Tower disaster in London. From the ‘chimney effect’ to the use of cheap, flammable materials, the 2025 Tai Po fire wasn’t an accident, it was a repeat of history”.
Fires, whether occurring in nature or man-made structures, are destructive and lethal. And when they happen in homes where we are supposed to be safe, they are even more terrifying.
Back in September 2017, I wrote a column titled “In iron grilles we shouldn’t trust” in response to two fires.
One was in a double-storey house in Subang Jaya, Selangor, that was started by the faulty power supply unit of a desktop computer on the ground floor. The family – parents and two sons – perished because they were trapped on the upper floor by bolted-down grilles on their windows.
The other fire happened at a tahfiz school in Kuala Lumpur and killed 21 boys and two teachers, all also trapped by immovable iron grilles.
I wanted to point out that Malaysians love to install iron grilles on windows and doors to feel safe but they become deadly in a fire.
At that time I was living in a landed property and those fires prompted my family to review the safety measures in our home. I bought six fire blankets and several extinguishers and even retractable aluminium ladders to be stored on the upstairs balconies. We even had drills to familiarise ourselves with positioning the ladders, securing them with ropes, and climbing down them.
Fast forward to 2024 and I had moved to a condominium in Bandar Utama, Petaling Jaya. I had the option of renting a unit on the 20th floor or the sixth floor.
Although a high floor was tempting, I settled on the latter largely due to concerns about being able to carry my then bedridden mother down to safety in case of an emergency. I continue to have fire blankets in the kitchen and I make sure I don’t overload power sockets with too many electrical gadgets.
As the Grenfell and Wang Fuk fires showed, a spark in one unit can set ablaze the entire property.
According to an article in The Edge Malaysia quoting Malaysian Institute of Architects secretary and Architect Centre-accredited building inspector Anthony Lee Tee, “Malaysia has one of the most developed and strict fire safety regulations for buildings in the world” and that architects and engineers are required to comply with the Uniform Building By-Laws and Fire Department safety regulations.
That sounds very nice, but as it happened in Grenfell and Wang Fuk, there are always people willing to compromise on safety when money is involved. Wang Fuk Court residents repeatedly lodged concerns with the authorities over safety when their blocks were covered in suspicious scaffolding material for a renovation but were ignored.
What’s more, buildings keep getting higher but firefighters can’t really keep up. Most aerial firetruck ladders can only go as high as 30m, or about seven to 10 floors. There are ladders that can reach up to 35 floors but whether they can be deployed effectively depends on several factors like street access and parking space, as well as wind and weather conditions.
While news reports may show very dramatic images of firefighters on high ladders shooting powerful jets of water to douse flames, for very tall buildings it is the internal system of fire lifts, wet and dry risers, and sprinklers that make up the primary firefighting strategy.
That is mandatory by law but studies show that people’s behaviour affects the speed and efficiency in evacuating a building on fire.
Experts, writing on el-observador.com, say that once a fire takes hold, getting thousands of people safely down dozens of storeys becomes a race against time. They found that human behaviour is one of the biggest sources of delay in high-rise evacuations. This is because people rarely act immediately when an alarm sounds. They look for confirmation, gather belongings, or coordinate with family members. The result is precious minutes lost.
Then when people do move, it is “a collision between the physical limits of the building and the realities of human behaviour under stress”.
Stairwells are the only reliable escape route in most buildings but “stair descent in real evacuations is far slower than most people expect. Fatigue is a major factor. Prolonged walking significantly reduces the speed of descent”.
They added that slower movers included older adults, people with physical or mobility issues, and groups evacuating together.
This reduced pace then can create bottlenecks.
It gets worse: When smoke reduces visibility, movement slows even further as people hesitate, misjudge steps, or adjust their speed.
That’s why the experts say, as high-rises grow taller and populations age, the assumption that “everyone can take the stairs” simply no longer holds. A full building evacuation can take too long and long stairway descents are sometimes impossible.
The solution: refuge floors and evacuation lifts. Refuge floors are fire- and smoke-protected levels built as safe staging points that give people somewhere safe to rest, transfer across to a less smoke-filled stairway, or wait for rescue. Evacuation elevators are engineered to operate during a fire with pressurised shafts, protected lobbies, and backup power.
Do we have that here? I have no idea. I know my 40-storey, decade-old condo does not have sprinklers, refuge floors, or evacuation lifts.
Meanwhile, we continue to build super high structures. When I look out my window, the skyline is chockablock with high-rise condominiums in close proximity to each other, and more keep sprouting up.
Do the authorities have the manpower and expertise to conduct regular inspections of so many high-rise and therefore high-risk buildings to ensure safety equipment is in tip-top condition and stairwells are obstruction-free? The public too should know how to respond in an emergency. But how many of us take fire drills seriously?
I second Alliance for a Safe Community chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye’s urgent appeal: We must not wait for a catastrophe like the Wang Fuk Court fire to occur here before strengthening our fire safety culture.
As he put it, “Fire safety must be seen not as a bureaucratic checklist, but as a shared responsibility and a moral obligation to protect lives”.
Well said, Tan Sri. As for me, while I no longer have to worry about Mum who passed away in August, as a senior citizen with bad knees, I am glad I live on the sixth floor. I can do without the view. The ground floor never looked better!
The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.
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