Hong Kong Arrests 3 Tied to Construction Company After Deadly Fire
The Hong Kong police on Thursday morning arrested three people tied to a construction company that installed scaffolding and netting on the buildings involved in the city’s worst fire in decades, saying they had reason to believe that the company’s “gross negligence” had led to the rapid spread of the blaze.
The police said that building materials used by the company for the work at Wang Fuk Court, such as protective netting, tarpaulin and sheeting, may not have been up to fire safety standards. […]
Separately, the government identified the registered contractor for the building complex as Prestige Construction and Engineering Company.
The mesh netting on the buildings that caught fire was probably a factor in how quickly the fire spread, said Tony Za, a former chairman of the Hong Kong Institute of Engineers Building Division. Typically made of fibers and plastic, such netting is used to keep construction materials and other objects from falling off bamboo scaffolding […]
The material in the netting is required to be noncombustible, and the contractor would have been required to provide a certificate attesting to that. But based on videos that showed the Wang Fuk Court fire’s swift movement, Mr. Za said he had reason to suspect that the netting was not up to standard. […]