Alright, updating with a little more information on the Hong Kong Fire happening right now November 26, 2025.
There appears to be at least four blocks fully engulfed. Based on information provided by the Hong Kong housing authority, there are around 4600 people who live in these 8 apartment buildings. Figure 2300 total people in the four that we can confirm are on fire. of those 2300, at least a third are over 65, so about 760 people are so. The fire started at 2 in the afternoon on a Wednesday so the younger residents would likely be at school/work, but 65 is the age at which Hong Kong residents can receive the Old Age Living Allowance meaning they would likely be home at that time. So we’re looking at an absolute floor of, being wildly conservative, 400 people in these buildings at the time of the fire, a large portion of which are likely elderly and would need assistance evacuating.
As of about 8:40 pm Hong Kong time, the fire service in Hong Kong was telling residents whose buildings were on fire to shelter in place and seal their doors to wait for rescue. Problem with that is, there are multiple photos of the buildings on fire with the fire clearly burning inside the building during the daytime (Photo 1 below). While sheltering in place is the normal operating procedure in a typical high rise fire, this is clearly not a typical high rise fire with the threat originating from the exterior and unimpeded flame spread from top to bottom of the building. There are two sets of stairwells and three elevators in each building (Photo 4 below). But I have not been able to find any information on if there is a general fire alarm in the building to sound a general evacuation. The building is very clearly not sprinklered.
As of yesterday November 25, all buildings were surrounded by bamboo scaffolding covered with a nylon covering (Photo 3 below). This allows for completely unimpeded extremely easy fire spread up and down the side of the building. It also hinders firefighting activities due to the risk of falling burning debris. Also hinders evacuation for the same reasons. This is a nightmare scenario.
And to make matters worse, the buildings are 31 stories tall, somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 meters or so. The highest ladder the Hong Kong Fire Service has appears to be about 60 meters. They have not been able to access the highest levels of the buildings due to intense fire and heat.
Basically, don’t expect much good news to come out from this situation. We’re in a worst case scenario right now. There have been 14 confirmed deaths, one of which was a responding firefighter. Expect this to grow.
