Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, John Lee has announced that every housing unit affected by the blaze at a housing estate in Tai Po district that started yesterday would receive emergency funds of HK$10,000 ($1,285) by tonight.
The leader also said that the government would establish a HK$300 million ($38.6m) fund to help residents from the housing estate.
It would also provide 1,000 hotel and youth hostel rooms for families to stay in for up to two weeks.
Amid safety fears about building practices, Lee added that 100 contractors across the city would have seven days to submit documents guaranteeing their use of fire-retardant materials.
Additionally, the Hong Kong Chief Executive stated that all housing estates undergoing major improvements will be immediately inspected, and he announced plans to phase out bamboo scaffolding.
Numerous Chinese companies and groups, including Xiaomi, Xpeng and Geely as well as the charity foundation of Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma, have pledged millions in donations to the fire victims.
Hong Kong’s anticorruption body said that it will be conducting a full investigation “into possible corruption in the grand renovation project of Wang Fuk Court in Tai Po.”
At least 65 people have been killed and more than 70 others injured, many suffering from burns and smoke inhalation in the blaze at the housing estate in Tai Po district that started yesterday, Wednesday, November 26, 2025. According to the city’s Fire Services Department, ten firefighters are among the injured.
Firefighters in Hong Kong are working for a second day to put out the Chinese territory’s deadliest and most destructive fire in 60 years.
The blaze began midafternoon on Wednesday on bamboo scaffolding and construction netting and then spread across seven buildings in the complex.
Officials said today that flames in four buildings in the Wang Fuk Court housing complex, located in the Tai Po neighbourhood, had been extinguished and fires in the rest of the site were under control.
However, rescuers are still racing to reach people feared trapped on the upper floors of the complex, where at least 279 people are unaccounted for.
The housing complex contains nearly 2,000 apartments for about 4,800 residents, including many older people who may have struggled to evacuate quickly.
It was built in the 1980s and had been undergoing a major renovation project, which Hong Kong’s anticorruption agency said it will investigate for possible corruption.
Three Men Arrested Over Hong Kong Fire
Meanwhile, three men from a construction company handling maintenance at the site have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.
Eileen Chung, a senior superintendent of police disclosed that the men; company Directors and an engineering consultant, were suspected of being “grossly negligent.”
Authorities suspected some materials on the exterior walls of the high-rise buildings did not meet fire resistance standards and led to the unusually fast spread of the fire.
Police also said they found styrofoam, which is highly flammable, attached to the windows on each floor near the elevator lobby of the one unaffected tower.
Alex Webb, a fire safety engineer at CSIRO Infrastructure Technologies in Australia, said that the disaster “is quite shocking” because regulations generally require buildings to be spaced apart to keep fires from spreading from one building to the next. “Typically, they don’t spread beyond the building of origin,” Webb said.
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