The lack of a sense of crisis and an overreliance on an “honour system” prevented the buildings, labour and fire safety authorities from acting on fire safety risks at Wang Fuk Court in Tai Po, a judge-led panel that investigated Hong Kong’s deadliest blaze in decades has found.
But among the four government bodies singled out in the independent committee’s final report on the fire, the Labour Department should bear the least responsibility, it said.
“Firstly and most importantly, there was a general lack of sense of crisis among various responsible departments that a devastating building facade fire of such scale could have happened in Hong Kong. Put simply, they failed to foresee the risks which were very much foreseeable,” the panel said in the report released on Thursday.