Firefighters unsure when NT fire can be put out

Firefighters on Wednesday said they were unsure when a blaze at a construction site in Hung Shui Kiu, which had been going on for a day, would be put out. But there were no signs the two cranes there might collapse as no vibrations were detected, fire officers said. The deputy chief fire officer of New Territories North, Wong King-man, said firefighters were assessing the condition of the basement at the site, and might be able to go in there later to put out the fire. “The temperature of the fire at the scene is very high and there’s heavy smoke,” he said, noting that a temperature of 500 degrees Celsius was recorded at the site. “The basement has a lot of frameworks of steel and wood, and it’s like a maze. So we have to be very careful when we go in there." Lu Pun-yan, a divisional officer of the Fire Services Department, said firefighters were equipped with new tracking devices when they entered the basement, in order to ensure their safety. More than 390 firefighters have been deployed so far to combat the four-alarm fire, which forced 150 workers to flee the site on Tuesday afternoon. A group of workers at a nearby construction site said they also had to leave their workplace, as they heard something explode. “The smoke’s very bad, like a fog and a dust storm. That’s when I knew the construction site next to us was in big trouble,” said a worker surnamed Wong. A woman living in a building near the scene said she could smell heavy smoke from her flat on the seventh floor. “I was a little afraid because the fire’s so close to my home. But luckily no one was hurt,” she said.