Massive Fires engulfed the 8 tower blocks at Wang Fuk Court (宏福苑) in Tai Po, Hong Kong on the 26 November 2025; 2 of the towers that were initially ablaze had the highest number of casualties and there was one tower that was hardly hit by the fires.
The total number of casualties reported by the government is at 159 right now; however the actual number of deaths is believed to be just over 300. The incidence is the worst fire Hong Kong has been in decades – since the second world war and we are deeply saddened by it.
We learnt about how the residents of the estate were almost coerced to proceed with the renovation works. The DAB member Peggy Wong championed the works to go ahead, rallying residents behind the project and obtained many power of attorneys from residents to ensure that the project went ahead. She obtained many Power of Attorneys from residents which allowed her to sway and control which contractor to use and the direction of the projection. She is now claiming to be not involved in the whole project at all; this seems a bit suspicious given that she went out on a limb to garner a massive power base from these power of attorneys. The architect/consultant whom evaluated the contractors for the project seems to have omitted key information which ultimately misled the stakeholders to go with the contractor has now stopped operation. From the prima facie evidence, it seems that Peggy Wong, the architects and the contractor were all in cahoots to hookwink the residents.
With so many unnecessary lives losts we really hope that ICAC would investigate all of the individuals to see if any misconduct took place and charge any individuals who have benefited from the projects. Given that this is Hong Kong we can only guess that Ms Peggy Wong had some benefits from the project given that she was so pro-active in ensuring that it went ahead.
Moreover, we hope that the government would release more information or even an actual list of individuals who lost their lives given that this would be of great interest to the public and that it would not be violating any privacy or personal data ordinances.