Hong Kong fire probe centers on bamboo scaffolding, an icon of the city

HONG KONG — Kan Shui-ying was home alone on Wednesday, watching television at her Hong Kong apartment while her husband and son were at work. It was around 3 p.m., she said, when she “smelled a strong burning odor.”

She thought she might be boiling something, so she went to check.

“I opened the window to see if there was anything,” Kan told NBC News. “Just then, a friend called me and said, ‘Wang Fuk Court is on fire!’”

Grabbing only her phone, Kan went downstairs to see what was going on and found the fire was already “burning very fiercely.”

“I thought I was just coming down to take a quick look,” she said, not realizing “that it was such a serious disaster.”

Kan and her family are among hundreds who lost their homes in the fire at the high-rise housing complex in Hong Kong’s northern Tai Po district. At least 83 people are dead and dozens of others missing in the Chinese territory’s deadliest blaze in seven decades.

Investigators are focusing on the bamboo scaffolding and mesh netting that surrounded the eight towers at Wang Fuk Court, seven of which were engulfed in flames. Three people from a contractor hired to carry out renovations have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, amid questions as to whether the building materials failed to meet safety standards and helped spread the fire.

John Lee, Hong Kong’s top leader, said Thursday night that the blaze was now “largely under control.” He also said the city’s Development Bureau had met with industry representatives to discuss gradually replacing the city’s widely used bamboo scaffolding with metal.

Bamboo scaffolding, a tradition with roots in ancient Chinese architecture, is an iconic part of Hong Kong, an international financial hub where skyscrapers are the norm. Bound together by nylon cords, the lattices are used for new construction as well as buildings under renovation.

Construction workers with specialized training in bamboo scaffolding — known as “spidermen” — scramble hundreds of feet up the sides of gleaming buildings in Hong Kong, a densely populated city of 7.5 million people. The scaffolding is often covered in mesh safety nets in green and other colors to prevent debris from falling onto pedestrians below.