Tong PingMoon said he first smelled smoke around 3 p.m. on Wednesday, and soon after, a firefighter banged on the door of his 10th floor apartment in Hong Kong to tell him a nearby building was on fire. Mr. Tong, 74, and his wife refused to evacuate then, thinking they would be all right, but the smoke soon got worse.
The couple, residents of Wang Fuk Court in the city’s Tai Po district, then called for help and hid in the bathroom, using wet towels to cover their faces and guard against smoke coming through the gap under the door. They were rescued by firefighters around 6 p.m. and were staying at a school being used as a temporary shelter.
“We were so lucky. It was pitch dark,” Mr. Tong said. “We wouldn’t have made it if we had to head out by ourselves.”
The fire in Tai Po started in one high-rise building in the midafternoon, and residents recounted how quickly it spread, forcing many to flee or seek help from firefighters. An unknown number of residents were trapped in the burning building, the officials said.
Some of those who escaped stood outside around midnight, watching firefighters try to tame the inferno.
“How can I go to sleep while my home is being burned down?” said Sze Kam Sang, a retiree in his 70s, quietly clutching a small cotton blanket and watching the fire in the crowd. He has been living in Wang Fuk Court for about 40 years and was at a doctor’s appointment when he heard about the fire from his wife, who was working nearby.
He hoped the fire hadn’t wiped out his 19th-floor apartment yet. The lower floors were clearly ablaze.
Mr. Sze added that a few small fires had been reported over the years, but not on this scale. He said the building was undergoing its first major maintenance project in four decades. It was encased in bamboo scaffolding, which is commonly used in Hong Kong for construction projects.
Early Thursday, the fire was still burning through the 32-story apartment towers, sending smoke into the sky. The bamboo scaffolding cracked and burst with showers of sparks. Dozens of fire trucks and ambulances were parked, their lights blinking.
Lam Chi -Tong, a 71-year-old cleaner, was working in a police station near her home at Wang Fuk Court when she got a call from her son around 4 p.m. on Wednesday to tell her that a nearby building had caught fire. She hurried back to her complex, only to find that her building, along with others, was also ablaze.
“I’ve lived here for 30 years. I just want to sit here and watch,” she said with a sigh as the fire continued to burn into the night.
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