Lee Chun Ho’s voice cracked as he sat in the witness chair recounting the day that Hong Kong’s worst fire in decades tore through his apartment complex, killing his mother, his elder brother, his 15-month-old niece and the family’s live-in maid.
Mr. Lee is one of dozens of people who have testified at public hearings in Hong Kong about the fire that killed 168 people at Wang Fuk Court in November. The hearings are being held by an independent committee appointed by the government to investigate the fire’s cause and identify safety and regulatory lapses.
Mr. Lee’s story stands out both for the staggering loss across three generations and for his firsthand account that the authorities had ignored early safety warnings from residents, including his mother. She died while trapped at home.
Mr. Lee said he hoped the investigation would deliver the accountability his mother had been seeking. “If not for the fire, I would have continued to live in Wang Fuk Court. If not for the fire, the four of them wouldn’t have died,” he told the committee. “I really hope we can uncover the truth and give them the justice they deserve.”
Major, government-mandated renovations were underway in Wang Fuk Court, in the Tai Po district of Hong Kong, when the fire broke out. Evidence from the hearing, which is being led by a judge, suggests the fire likely started from a cigarette butt discarded by a construction worker.
Several factors contributed to its rapid spread from one building to seven of the eight towers: Contractors had draped the buildings in cheap, flammable nets and covered the windows with foam boards, also flammable, which drew the fire into the apartments. As part of the renovations, the fire alarm had been disabled for months and the water tank drained, which hampered rescue efforts.
Ignored Warnings
Mr. Lee’s parents moved into Wang Fuk Court when the complex opened in 1983. They raised two boys there, frequenting the playgrounds and basketball court downstairs. Eventually, their household expanded to include their daughter-in-law and a granddaughter.
Mr. Lee’s mother, Yip Pik Yi, who was known as Mrs. Lee, was a maternal figure to many neighbors who grew up alongside Mr. Lee and his brother, according to Mr. Lee. “She could intuit things — she knew what people were going to say before they even said them,” he said in an interview.
At the hearing, Mr. Lee said that long before the fire, his mother had worried that the renovations were being mismanaged and that workers were cutting corners. In 2024, Mrs. Lee and a group of younger residents ran for the complex’s owners’ committee and successfully unseated longtime incumbents. They formed a new “accountability” group and urged residents to document problems with the renovations.
Mr. Lee testified that his mother had repeatedly voiced safety concerns to the project’s contractor. She complained that construction workers were smoking cigarettes on the site. After a strong typhoon damaged protective netting around the buildings, Mrs. Lee urged the contractor to replace it. New nets were installed, and the contractor told her that the material was up to code. After the fire, investigators found that the new netting did not meet fire-safety standards.
“If the government departments had listened to us very carefully and responded to the calls of residents, this blaze could have been avoided,” Mr. Lee told the committee.
Trapped on the 19th Floor
On the day of the fire, Mr. Lee was at work. He rushed back as soon as he heard the news and saw that his building was surrounded by plumes of thick smoke. He was blocked by police officers from entering but managed to call his mother around 4 p.m.
“Hey, son, what is happening?” she said to him, according to Mr. Lee. “I know nothing at all.” She had already called emergency services but wondered why no fire alarms had sounded. She was inside the apartment with her granddaughter, Yan Yan; Mr. Lee’s brother and the toddler’s father, Chun Man; and the maid, Erawati, who was from Indonesia.
They couldn’t see outside because of the foam coverings on the windows. As the hours passed, Mrs. Lee became increasingly angry that no one had come to help them. They had lost water and power, Mr. Lee said.
By 9 p.m., the four of them had retreated into the main bedroom. On FaceTime, Mr. Lee could see his brother carrying Yan Yan and patting his mother and Erawati to prevent them from passing out from the smoke.
Mr. Lee begged police officers to help, but they told him to wait. A fire commander told him that rescuers couldn’t go past the 14th floor because the flames were too strong. His family was on the 19th floor.
Mr. Lee stayed on the phone with them until the line disconnected.
The Weight of Survival
After the fire, only three of them remained: Mr. Lee, his father, and his brother’s wife, now widow, Esther Chan.
The elder Mr. Lee, a 70-year-old taxi driver, had lost his wife of four decades, a son and a granddaughter. Ms. Chan had lost her husband and their daughter, who had started to walk just two months before the fire. When Mr. Lee went to the morgue to identify his brother’s body, he saw that his fists had been tightly clenched when he died — a sight that continues to haunt him.
More than 500 people attended their funeral. On the day of the burial, each of the survivors rode in a hearse with a deceased family member. Yan Yan’s coffin was pink.
Family meals were once crowded affairs. On a recent Sunday, they gathered for lunch at a diner back in Tai Po. “We’ve lost our family members and we’ve lost our home. It’s very difficult,” the elder Mr. Lee said.
The family had persuaded Mr. Lee’s father to retire after the fire. He had been a Taoist all his life, but he started attending a Christian church to try to make sense of his loss.
Ms. Chan barely said a word at lunch. Between bites of a pineapple bun, she scrolled through her phone and found a photo of Yan Yan, taken two weeks before the fire, her cherub cheeks framed by a crown of jet-black hair.
Walking around the neighborhood, Mr. Lee was constantly reminded of his mother and Yan Yan, who were especially close. Yan Yan was a sociable child who loved to wave at people, so much so that shopkeepers nicknamed her “Miss Hong Kong.” At 1 p.m. every day, Mrs. Lee and Yan Yan would go out for a dim sum lunch and FaceTime their family members who were at work. At night, they slept in the same bed.
“I feel sad looking at us like this. It feels incomplete,” Mr. Lee said. “We were three generations living together. Now, we have lost three generations at once.”
On Saturday, the Lee family returned to their home for the first time since the fire. They wore hard hats and masks and climbed the stairs to the 19th floor.
Inside the apartment, everything was blackened and smelled of smoke. The main bedroom, though, was eerily intact. Mr. Lee said he broke down as he thought about his mother, brother, Yan Yan and Erawati huddled there for hours, waiting to be rescued.
The family was given just three hours to collect their belongings. When it was time to leave, Mr. Lee spoke to those who had perished. He told his niece, Yan Yan, that he missed her, and he thanked Erawati for looking after his family.
“I’m sorry,” he said to his brother. “I promised to save Yan Yan, but I couldn’t. I’m not as heroic as you are. You looked after our mother, your daughter and our helper, enduring till the very end.”
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