Playing one last song on a piano that cannot be retrieved from a fire-ravaged home is among the wishes of residents returning to the scene of the deadly Tai Po blaze, with one man climbing stairs on a fractured leg to try and recover a water boiler linked to his childhood memories. Some of those returning to their homes on Friday had lived in Wang Cheong House, the worst-hit block, where 81 of the 168 deaths in the Tai Po fire occurred. Only five floors of the block – where 63 per cent of flats...
Thousands of Hongkongers braved thundery and rainy weather on Ching Ming Festival on Sunday to sweep tombs, with some distraught Wang Fuk Court residents returning to the fire-ravaged site to mourn. It was the first Ching Ming Festival for more than 5,000 displaced residents at Tai Po’s Wang Fuk Court, the site of Hong Kong’s deadliest fire since 1948. The inferno claimed 168 lives after the blaze broke out on November 26 and spread across seven of the estate’s eight towers. During the festival,...