A Hong Kong building inspector mistook illegal alterations to emergency staircases at a housing estate ravaged in a deadly fire as protective measures for “broken” windows, because he based his assessment solely on documents and did not carry out a site visit, a public inquiry has heard.
Senior maintenance surveyor Nick Yung Siu-lun, the head of the minor works team of the Housing Bureau’s independent checking unit, said on Thursday he thought the wooden boards used to cover the temporary openings at Wang Fuk Court’s eight buildings were designed to protect the original non-fire-rated windows due to be replaced with fireproof panels during a HK$336 million (US$43 million) renovation project.
He told an independent committee that he did not realise the windows had been deliberately removed to give workers access to scaffolding when he inspected photos of the modifications in a document review in May last year.
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He insisted that existing protocols at the time only required him to ensure the contractor had submitted all necessary information to authorities, without conducting any site visits.
Yung said he would have inspected the changes in person had the Buildings Department updated its manual on monitoring construction sites, prompting the judge overseeing the committee to question whether he was evading responsibility on the matter.
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The fire broke out on November 26 last year while the Tai Po estate was undergoing repairs required under the mandatory building inspection scheme. The blaze raged across seven of the eight towers for 43 hours, killing 168 people and displacing nearly 5,000.