Suyitno first saw the news of a deadly fire at Wang Fuk Court in Hong Kong’s Tai Po district on social media last Wednesday afternoon.
Yet, despite the harrowing footage of the estate engulfed in billowing smoke and leaping flames, Suyitno, who lives in the Indonesian city of Malang in East Java and whose wife was working in Hong Kong as a domestic helper, was not immediately concerned.
He did not recognise the location as the workplace of his 39-year-old wife Erawati, who had been living on and off in the city since 2011.
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What unfolded next was a surreal sequence of events that would haunt Suyitno’s family for the rest of their days.
At around 7pm, Erawati called her husband. “She told me that she was caught up in the incident,” Suyitno, 35, who only goes by one name, told This Week in Asia, recalling the last image of his wife on that video call.
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“She asked me to forgive her, and to tell our family that she asked for their forgiveness too. She told me that she couldn’t breathe any more and that she thought she was not going to make it.”
