Filipino helper who fled Hong Kong fire with girl anguished over dead neighbour

A Filipino domestic worker who fled Hong Kong’s deadly inferno with her employers’ three-year-old daughter in her arms has expressed regret that she was unable to persuade a neighbour who perished in the blaze to also try to escape.

Reinalyn Niere, who arrived in the city last year, said she was asleep with the child in the family’s third-floor flat in Tai Po’s Wang Fuk Court when disaster struck at the housing estate on Wednesday afternoon. The child’s parents were at work at the time.

Initially, they believed their home in Wang Tao House would not be affected, but a friend called Niere to warn her that the building was on fire.

She and the child escaped by running down the smoke-filled stairwell. Niere said she covered the child and ran for her life, shielding the girl from falling embers as she pushed through the flames.

Niere said on Sunday she was still in pain after colliding with bamboo scaffolding during the escape. She said her employer told her: “You are my hero.”

But guilty feelings remain. She said she should have insisted on urging her neighbour to flee. The neighbour chose to stay and was found dead subsequently, she said.

  

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