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The Tai Po blaze of 2025 will be remembered as one of Hong Kong’s deadliest, but the territory has a grim history of fire-related tragedies, many of which prompted new regulations and reforms.
The earliest major fire recorded in the city’s history was the Happy Valley Racecourse blaze in February 1918. Around 10,000 people were sitting on an overloaded bamboo and palm leaves spectator stand to watch the Derby Day race that day.
The overloaded stand collapsed and was set on fire by food stalls underneath it. Over 600 lost their lives as authorities struggled to put out the blaze. A memorial for the incident stands today on the hillside near Hong Kong Stadium.
An explosion at a Wing On Department Store warehouse in Shek Tong Tsui, on the western part of Hong Kong Island, claimed 176 lives in 1948 and took six days to put out.
Fires in one of the world’s densest cities became much more common around the 1950s, a time when Hong Kong’s population ballooned with the arrival of Chinese refugees fleeing civil war and communist rule in mainland China – but before the British colony had much urban planning to speak of.
Chinese migrants congregated in densely populated slums known as squatter areas, formed by houses built by the residents themselves with scrap wood and metal. A series of squatter fires in that decade left tens of thousands homeless.
The tragedies sped up the creation of an affordable public housing system under the British colonial government, changed the course of Hong Kong’s property history, and led to reforms in building and fire regulations.
At least 13 fires ravaged different squatter villages that covered swaths of urban Kowloon between 1950 and 1953, typically leaving thousands homeless each time they occurred.
In 1950, 20,000 people were left homeless after a blaze swept Kowloon Walled City near today’s Kowloon Tong, according to the New York Times. No bodies were recovered from the virtually lawless quarters, and fire services refused to estimate the number of deaths, the newspaper reported.
Turning point
The fire etched in Hong Kong’s collective memory occurred in Shek Kip Mei on Christmas Day 1953.
The blaze first broke out when a cobbler tipped over an alcohol lamp that soon spread over the inflammable shoe glue he was working with at his squatter home. The flames spread rapidly within minutes to hundreds of wooden houses in the slum. The incident left three dead and 51 injured, but up to 60,000 people were left without shelter overnight.
Although the number of casualties was relatively small, the Shek Kip Mei inferno was later recalled in many television documentaries and dramas due to the large number of people displaced and lives altered, leaving a lasting impression on many who grew up in that era.
The tragedy became a turning point in Hong Kong’s housing history, as it became increasingly untenable for hundreds of thousands to live in such cramped conditions.
By the end of 1954, the colonial government had built eight six-storey concrete buildings to house those rendered homeless by the fire. The Shek Kip Mei Estate became one of the city’s first public housing estates, among dozens more that were completed in the following decade.
Roughly 30 per cent of people in Hong Kong live in government rental housing today.
The government also reformed its fire alarm system in the early 1960s. In 1964, it created the five-level alarm system used today, which helps determine a fire’s severity and fire services deployment.
Through the late 1950s and 1960s, a number of smaller fires continued to occur in wooden multistorey walk-up residential buildings in densely populated areas, such as one which killed almost 60 people in 1957 in Mong Kok and another which took 47 lives in Cheung Sha Wan’s Un Chau Street in 1962.
Fires with more than a dozen casualties became less frequent in the following decades, until 1996, when a blaze at the Garley Building, on Nathan Road in Jordan, left 41 dead. The fire started in the elevator shafts of the commercial building, where the elevators had been removed and their doors left open for renovation work.
The flames spread quickly through the shafts and claimed unsuspecting lives, as many occupants were told that smoke and burning smells were normal during the renovations.
Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten called for an investigation commission four weeks later, appointing Justice Woo Kwok-hing to preside over it. The commission found the following year that a lack of leadership and coordination from the fire services contributed to the casualties.
No.5 alarms
The last time Hong Kong saw a No. 5 fire alarm was in 2008 at Cornwall Court in Mong Kok. The blaze started in a nightclub in the building, killing four people – including two firefighters in the line of duty – and injuring 55. It also paralysed traffic in central Mong Kok for most of the day.
Today, Hong Kong is reeling from the shock as dozens of people have died in a tragedy despite modern systems and infrastructure being in place.
On Friday afternoon, 48 hours after the fire broke out at Wang Fuk Court, the government announced the death toll at the Tai Po housing estate had risen to 128.
Fire Services Director Andy Yeung said that the Fire Services Department’s inspection team found that the fire alarm system in the housing estate’s eight buildings “could not function properly.”
Fires with casualties have become rarer in the present day and rarely surpass dozens. However, the Wang Fuk Court blaze subverts our understanding of what it means to live safely in a city where the vast majority of the population lives in modern high-rises, typically equipped with fire alarm systems and sprinklers.
