What we know about the Hong Kong apartment fires

22nd December 2025

Anyone who witnessed the Grenfell Tower fire happening in real time will have hoped to never see a similar sight again. This was the unfortunate reality greeting onlookers of the Wang Fuk Court fire in the Tai Po district of Hong Kong, a massive conflagration that affected eight parallel apartment blocks, and has led to the loss of hundreds of lives.

Any disaster of this scale will raise serious questions, but these are amplified by just how familiar it feels. While we are still learning about the nature of the disaster, the early indications show that while certain aspects of the fire were very different from Grenfell, others were sadly and starkly familiar—with lessons for construction stakeholders everywhere.

A tragedy in Tai Po

The estate involved in the fire consists of eight towers, each around 31 storeys tall, containing nearly 2,000 flats and housing between 4,600 and 4,800 residents. The fire reportedly began at around 14:51 local time, on external scaffolding surrounding one of the towers. This scaffolding was constructed from bamboo, and wrapped in a protective mesh netting as part of ongoing renovation works.

As the blaze ignited, it spread swiftly up the façade, moving from floor to floor and then leaping inside the flats, eventually engulfing seven of the eight towers. By the time the fire was finally extinguished, it had become Hong Kong’s deadliest apartment-block fire in decades. At least 146 people have been confirmed dead, with more than 70 injured and many residents still missing or unaccounted for.

While investigations are still ongoing, several causes of the fire were quickly honed in on by local authorities, and multiple arrests have already been made. Officials have detained several people from the construction company handling the renovations, including directors and an engineering consultant, all of whom are suspected of gross negligence and possible manslaughter charges.

What we know so far

While the full investigation is ongoing, authorities have identified several key factors that likely contributed to the rapid spread and scale of the fire. While it’s extremely important not to engage in undue speculation, there is a level of certainty around some of the factors involved, giving us immediate lessons to prevent a similar tragedy.

Scaffolding, netting and exterior materials

Authorities and residents have confirmed that the buildings at Wang Fuk Court were enveloped in bamboo scaffolding and draped in green protective mesh netting, as well as plastic safety screens. Officials now report that samples of this netting failed fire-resistance tests, with seven separate samples found to be non-compliant with safety standards.

Investigators believe the fire began on or near this exterior mesh or scaffolding, potentially triggered by an ignition source during renovation work. Once lit, the combination of combustible scaffolding and flammable netting provided a vertical path for flames to climb rapidly up the buildings, bypassing any fire compartmentation. National security and building-safety officials have already responded, announcing plans to expedite the transition from bamboo to metal scaffolding across Hong Kong.

Flammable window boards and interior spread

Another aggravating factor appears to be the use of foam panels or polystyrene to board up windows during renovation. In at least one tower that remained intact, such foam was found covering windows, using a material described by fire officials as “highly flammable.” This foam may have accelerated the spread of fire from the exterior into apartments, shattering glass and allowing flames and smoke to take hold inside.

Once inside, the fire spread through corridors and up multiple floors. Early reports indicate that this may have been aided by the building’s layout, as well as malfunctioning safety systems such as fire alarms, with some residents suggesting that fire alarms did not activate in some blocks as the fire unfolded.

Other factors and structural vulnerabilities

The spread of fire between multiple apartment blocks is particularly noteworthy in this incident. It’s thought windy conditions on the day may have fanned flames around the scaffolding, while debris and falling fragments from the burning bamboo and plastic sheeting could have ignited lower levels or adjacent blocks.

Given these findings, authorities have described the combination of flammable exterior materials, failed safety compliance, and inadequate active fire protection as major contributing factors. Much of this—from the bypassing of fire compartmentation, to the failing fire protection systems, to the building layout—is both eerily and heartbreakingly similar to the Grenfell Tower fire.

The danger of apartment block fires

The scale and tragedy of Wang Fuk Court’s fire has drawn immediate comparisons to the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London, where flammable cladding and poor fire safety compliance resulted in 72 deaths. In that fire, flammable exterior cladding allowed a fire in one apartment to ignite the entire facade of the building, bypassing fire compartmentation measures, and invalidating fire safety advice given to residents to shelter in place.

High-rise buildings pose unique fire risks, not all of which are obvious. As demonstrated in both incidents, any fire that breaches the building envelope (such as through cladding or scaffolding) can climb rapidly up and down the building, engulfing multiple floors in minutes. Residents on upper floors often face blocked exits, smoke inhalation, failing elevators, and rising temperatures. The need to fight the fire at many different levels makes it difficult for emergency services to focus their efforts, and higher floors become harder to reach.

Typical internal fire-compartmentation strategies can help, but much depends on preventing the external spread of fire. Fire doors, stairwell separation, smoke extraction systems, and fire-rated materials throughout the building can help to combat a fire, and can even protect escape routes in a major fire such as this. The Grenfell inquiry highlighted how flammable external cladding, inadequate building regulation enforcement, and poor fire-safety inspections combined to create disaster, lessons that now appear tragically relevant.

For Hong Kong and similarly dense cities with many high-rise towers, there will be immediate ramifications. Even where building standards have changed since Grenfell, they may not always be properly enforced, and will often not accommodate old towers such as these ones, which were in the process of being refurbished. The hope is that lessons are learned not just from the fires, but from the fallout from Grenfell, and how other homeowners have been impacted by discovering that their buildings are also in danger.

What this may mean for Hong Kong and future building practices

Hong Kong authorities have already signalled a major shift in construction regulations. The government has begun accelerating the phase-out of bamboo scaffolding, especially for large-scale exterior works on tall buildings, with a focus on using metal scaffolding and fire-rated netting going forwards. This brings them more into line with much of the rest of Asia, which has similarly moved away from using bamboo in recent years.

A surge in safety inspections is also highly likely. Hong Kong authorities may pour more resources into ensuring stricter enforcement of fire codes, and institute more rigorous certification requirements for temporary works. Contractors could also face heavier scrutiny when selecting scaffolding netting and protective sheeting, especially in high-density residential zones.

More broadly, building owners and developers may need to reconsider renovation methods entirely. Exterior renovation on occupied high-rise residences may come under tighter regulation, or even a moratorium. Retrofit projects are likely to increasingly demand fire-retardant scaffolding materials, regular fire-safety audits, improved alarm systems, and robust fire-compartmentation at the tender stage.

Internationally, this tragedy may also prompt other cities with older high-rise estates to reflect, and reevaluate their external maintenance practices. The risk of using combustible scaffolding or non-compliant materials in renovation could become politically and legally untenable, insofar as the memories of these two tragic fires persist.

Ways to improve fire safety in apartment blocks

What’s clear from this and many other disasters is that no fire results from a single flaw. Whatever the final findings of the Hong Kong fires are, there is a clear need to cement the importance of both active and passive fire protection measures for apartment blocks and highrises, both in law and amongst contractors.

On the passive protection side, robust compartmentation is key. This requires fire-resistant walls and floors, fire-rated doors and ducts, fire-rated window assemblies, and non-combustible exterior materials to fully seal the building envelope, but it also relies on the safety of external works such as scaffolding. Protective netting needs to meet certified fire-resistance standards, and flammable materials like polystyrene window boards should be banned during any exterior maintenance.

Interior fire safety features also need to be up to standard, and regularly reviewed and maintained. Functional fire alarms, smoke detectors, sprinklers, and emergency lighting are all essential, and no one measure should be considered perfunctory. This applies at the design level, but also in day-to-day usage, with efforts required to keep stairwells and escape routes accessible and free from obstructions. Regular fire drills and resident awareness programmes can also help to ensure people know how to respond in a fire.

On the active protection side, modern fire doors and smoke extraction systems can slow the spread of fire and smoke by automatically engaging, giving residents and firefighters critical time. The fundamental aim in any disaster should be to save as many lives as possible, and these systems are critical to this, reducing smoke in corridors and stairwells, and preventing the spread of fire into common areas.

Where permitted work does need to be carried out, strict regulation and inspection of scaffolding materials and construction methods should be employed. It should go without saying that temporary scaffolding needs to be constructed from non-combustible materials, and fire-retardant mesh and netting has to be properly certified and regularly replaced. As the Notre Dame fire also showed us, open-flame work such as welding or hot-works should require permits and strict fire-watch protocols.

Finally, building-wide risk assessments should be mandated before approving large renovation projects like this one. These should evaluate fire risk factors such as scaffolding, building occupancy, evacuation routes, compartmentation integrity, and compliance with fire codes. Much like in the Grenfell disaster, residents voiced safety concerns and complaints prior to this fire, yet their warnings about alarms and unsafe renovation conditions appear not to have been heeded.

Lessons for the future

The fires at Wang Fuk Court are a tragedy whose full human cost we are still coming to terms with. What we know so far about the flammable scaffolding and netting, foam-lined windows, and other compliance issues paints a grim picture of how external renovation works can undermine the fire safety of high-rise buildings.

Like Grenfell seven years ago, the disaster underlines the challenges that apartment buildings still face, and the critical importance of robust fire-safety systems and strict building standards. However innocuous it may seem, any use of combustible materials or faulty renovation practices can permeate and upend these protections.

The fire should mark a turning point for Hong Kong, but also building regulations and oversight more generally. While the use of bamboo scaffolding and unapproved materials clearly needs to end, there are clearly still issues with building safety enforcement worldwide, and gaps in both passive fire protection and active fire systems. For building owners, developers and public authorities elsewhere, it’s a reminder that even temporary structures and modifications can leave a permanent and deadly mark.