HONG KONG – Nearly three months has passed since the deadly fire in Tai Po, Hong Kong, and yet it has not really ended.
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A catastrophic Level 5 blaze erupted Nov. 26, 2025 at the Wang Fuk Court residential estate in Tai Po, engulfing seven of eight high-rise towers in the densely populated housing complex.
It was the first Level 5 alarm fire in Hong Kong in 17 years and became Hong Kong’s deadliest in decades.
Official figures now estimate the death toll to be 159 people, including residents of all ages, domestic workers, on-site construction workers and firefighters.
Many were still missing when the investigation concluded with the cause unknown.
Hong Kong radio station RTHK’s comprehensive coverage of the fire can be used to piece together a timeline of events and the BBC and Chinese newspaper Wen Wui Po gave readers statistics about the death toll and other aspects of the fire. All were used in this article.
Authorities quickly classified it as the highest alarm level after it started in the early afternoon due to how fast the smoke and flames spread through the bamboo scaffolding and renovation netting that wrapped the estate’s towers.
According to Chinese media, many fire experts have said that the speed of escalation was highly unusual for a residential estate. Fire crews battled the blaze for over 40 hours, with more than 2,000 firefighters and rescue workers mobilized and supported by hundreds of vehicles.
The news cycle has moved on. There are no longer news vans and reporters standing outside Wang Fuk Court, where the fire started.
The footage of flames licking the sides of the building no longer loops on our screens. People have stopped discussing how they can help and whether others have heard the news.
The volunteers and the supply stands have cleared from the Tai Po district and the funds have stopped rolling in, but the tragedy does not disappear when the smoke disappears. It settles into the city, into its people and into the way we walk past the familiar streets with an unfamiliar heaviness.
Tai Po is quieter now. Too quiet. And therefore it is easier to overlook.
For the families who survived but lost their homes, life has not just reset itself because the cameras left. For the lucky ones, temporary housing is still temporary.
For the unlucky ones, there is no new home. Paperwork still piles up. Grief still interrupts sleep, work, and conversation.
Some survivors are learning to navigate daily life with injuries, trauma, or the absence of someone who used to be there – someone who made tea in the morning, someone who waited by the door at night.
Hong Kong is good at responding to emergencies. We are taught, almost instinctively, to move fast. To rebuild. To endure. But that also makes us uncomfortable with the slow aftermath, in the long stretch of time where help is still needed, but no longer urgent enough to trend on our headlines.
There are still so many unanswered questions and many uncomfortable facts, as they are focused on many practices that have been treated as Hong Kong culture.
In the weeks following the fire, public attention has increasingly focused on the bamboo scaffolding and protective mesh that surrounded Wang Fuk Court at the time of the blaze due to the ongoing renovation and construction work.
Bamboo scaffolding has been used in Hong Kong for decades and is widely defended as flexible, efficient, and culturally significant. But many critics of the material argue that our tradition should not override safety, particularly when the scaffolding wraps tightly around occupied residential buildings.
Others say that it was the protective mesh that caused the fire to escalate rapidly, rather than the bamboo scaffolding.
While such mesh is often described as ‘fire-retardant’ or ‘heat-resistant,’ experts have questioned whether these materials are truly non-combustible, or whether they merely slow ignition under limited conditions.
In the Tai Po fire, flames appeared to race vertically along the building’s exterior, which is a phenomenon some fire specialists suggest may have been exacerbated by the mesh trapping heat and allowing fire to spread upward rather than dissipate.
There is much scrutiny on whether the construction company responsible for the renovation of the Wang Fuk Court cut corners. According to authorities, the construction company involved has maintained that it followed existing rules.
But investigators are examining how materials were selected, how they were installed, and how closely work was supervised.
These details matter. The Tai Po fires have shown us that safety often fails not when laws are broken outright, but when these standards are met on paper but not in practice.
There are concerns over whether cost-saving decisions may have influenced the choice of materials, including the density and layering of protective mesh, the spacing of scaffolding and the extent of fire-retardant treatment applied. Others have questioned whether on-site inspections were frequent or rigorous enough, and whether subcontracting diluted responsibility to the point where no single party maintained full oversight or full accountability.
None of these questions have been conclusively answered. Arrests and interviews suggest that authorities consider the possibility of negligence serious enough to pursue, but there is still debate around responsibility.
For now, there is no accountability. Contractors, subcontractors and regulatory bodies push it onto each other.
For residents, this ambiguity is deeply unsettling. Cutting corners – if it occurred – is not a minor oversight if it caused such a huge tragedy. It shows that construction companies fail to recognize that behind every construction decision are lives still being lived inside those buildings.
Construction is a part of daily life in Hong Kong. Bamboo scaffolding hugs residential towers across the city, often just meters from people’s windows. We trust that what surrounds our homes is safe, not because we have checked it ourselves, but because we believe the system has done so on our behalf.
The Tai Po fires have shattered that trust.
Almost two months later, many of these questions remain unanswered.
The fire lives on in the everyday lives of people rebuilding, both materially and emotionally. Their needs have not expired. Their grief has not been resolved.
And as public attention fades, the risk is not only that justice may be delayed, but that lessons may go unlearned. Facts, statements and conclusions do not matter solely for accountability, but for prevention of future tragedies that leave hundreds without a home.
Remembering the Tai Po fire, then, is not only about honoring those affected. It is not only about dwelling on tragedy, but also about insisting on answers and demanding that something meaningful comes from tragedy.
Sophia Ling is a Junior Reporter with Youth Journalism International.
