HONG KONG — Kan Shui-ying was home alone on Wednesday, watching television at herHong Kongapartment while her husband and son were at work. It was around 3 p.m., she said, when she "smelled a strong burning odor."
She thought she might be boiling something, so she went to check.
"I opened the window to see if there was anything," Kan told NBC News. "Just then, a friend called me and said, 'Wang Fuk Court is on fire!'"
Grabbing only her phone, Kan went downstairs to see what was going on and found the fire was already "burning very fiercely."
"I thought I was just coming down to take a quick look," she said, not realizing "that it was such a serious disaster."
Kan and her family are among hundreds who lost their homes in thefire at the high-rise housing complexin Hong Kong's northern Tai Po district. At least 83 people are dead and dozens of others missing in the Chinese territory's deadliest blaze in seven decades.
Investigators are focusing on mesh netting on scaffolding that surrounded the eight towers at Wang Fuk Court, seven of which were engulfed in flames. Flammable styrofoam boards found inside the complex are also under scrutiny.
Three people from a contractor hired to carry out renovations have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, amid questions as to whether building materials failed to meet safety standards and helped spread the fire.
John Lee, Hong Kong's top leader, said Thursday night that the blaze was now "largely under control." He also said the city's Development Bureau had met with industry representatives to discuss gradually replacing the city's widely used bamboo scaffolding with metal.
Bamboo scaffolding, a tradition with roots in ancient Chinese architecture, is an iconic part of Hong Kong, an international financial hub where skyscrapers are the norm. Bound together by nylon cords, the lattices are used for new construction as well as buildings under renovation.
Construction workers with specialized training in bamboo scaffolding — known as "spidermen" — scramble hundreds of feet up the sides of gleaming buildings in Hong Kong, a densely populated city of 7.5 million people. The scaffolding is often covered in mesh safety nets in green and other colors to prevent debris from falling onto pedestrians below.
While no officials have directly linked the fire to the bamboo itself, they have said that the rapid spread of the fire may be linked to the mesh netting used to cover the scaffolding.
"The protective netting, protective films, waterproof tarpaulins, and plastic sheets on the external walls of the building in question burned much more intensely and spread significantly faster than materials that meet safety standards. We find this to be unusual," the city's security secretary, Chris Tang, said early on Thursday.
Derek Armstrong Chan, deputy director of Fire Service operations, also said scaffolding falling from upper floors had complicated rescue efforts.
Asked about the role the netting played in the fire, he told a press conference on Thursday: "Our preliminary view is that the fire spreading so fast is likely related to these materials."
The tradition of bamboo scaffolding has endured in Hong Kong even after regulators in mainland China mandated decades ago that it be replaced with steel and aluminum.
"Bamboo scaffolding has its benefits," said Yau Yung, a professor at Lingnan University in Hong Kong who studies housing. "Not just because of the low cost, but also it can be flexible."
The practice has long been a source of cultural pride in Hong Kong, which featured bamboo scaffolding in its pavilion at this year'sVenice Biennale architecture exhibition. But it's a profession with an aging workforce, with only about 2,500 bamboo scaffolding masters currently registered in the city, according to official figures.
In March, the Hong Kong government's Development Bureau said that going forward, 50% of new public building projects would be required to use metal scaffolding. It said that although bamboo scaffolding that complies with regulations is structurally safe, metal scaffolding would "better protect the safety of staff" and bring Hong Kong in line with "advanced international and mainland cities."
At the time, the announcement prompted public laments that Hong Kong, aformer British colony turned Chinese territory, was losing another piece of its identity at a time when its freewheeling democracy and legal autonomy has already been eroded byBeijing's crackdown on dissentfollowing antigovernment protests in 2019.
It came amid wider concerns about a series of fatal accidents on Hong Kong construction sites, not all of them involving bamboo scaffolding. According to the Hong Kong Labor Department, there were22 deaths involving bamboo scaffoldingfrom 2018 to October 2024.
Though fire risk was not the emphasis of the Hong Kong government announcement, experts say it's a good reason to shift to metal scaffolding.
"Bamboo material is combustible," said Jiang Liming, an associate professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) who focuses on fire safety engineering.
Surrounding buildings entirely in bamboo scaffolding "is like multiple buildings connecting together," he said.
The Wang Fuk Court fire follows several similar ones this year, including last month when bamboo scaffolding and mesh netting caught fire outside a building in Hong Kong's central business district, injuring four people.
"It seems to us that we haven't learned from the past," said Ho Wing Ip, an adjunct professor at PolyU and an electrical and building services engineer.
The latest fire has also drawn comparisons to the2017 inferno at Grenfell Towerin London, which killed 72 people in a single 24-story building. That blaze was found to have been caused by flammable cladding outside the tower, among other factors.
"Our hearts go out to all those affected by the horrific fire in Hong Kong," the Grenfell United survivors group said in a post on X. "To the families, friends and communities, we stand with you. You are not alone."
The fire is Hong Kong's deadliest in decades. The last major high-rise fire was in 1996 and killed 41 people.
"Fire safety in Hong Kong is pretty good," said Huang Xinyan, a combustion scientist and fire safety engineer at PolyU.
But it was unusual for all seven buildings at Wang Fuk Court to burn at the same time, he said.
"For the entire building [to be] covered with bamboo scaffolding, I think the risk is too high to be acceptable," he said.