More steps urged to prevent fires

HONG KONG - The second fire in less than a year on Fa Yuen Street in Mong Kok has raised questions about the safety of the city's tenements and about the fire regulations that govern the use of hawker stalls.

Nine people died and more than 30 were injured, six of them critically, after a fire ignited in a hawker stall on the street and spread to a tenement on Wednesday morning.

Zhao Minghong, whose family fled from the blaze, lived in an apartment four buildings away from the fire scene. Zhao's 9-year-old son, Chung Chun-yan, said he didn't know what was happening when Zhao woke him up.