A deadly fire broke out in crowded Fa Yuen Street on Nov 30, almost in situ where an arson case took place one year ago. In spite of previous calamities, it appears the public is yet to fully absorb fire prevention measures. Lam Kin-keung writes.

When I learned of the fire in Fa Yuen Street on Nov 30, I felt something that could not adequately be described as sorrow.

During my 34 years of career as a police officer, I supervised and participated in the investigations into three massive fire disasters. Each attracted widespread public attention. Effectively, I became an insider, given a close perspective of these tragedies triggered by human negligence and the absence of precautionary measures.

There was a hellish blaze in the Garley Building on Nathan Road on Nov 20, 1996 that swept away the lives of 41 people, while another 80 who escaped the flames and smoke were injured. It was a No 5 alarm fire, the worst catastrophe in Hong Kong since the World War II.

I was then a detective station sergeant serving at the West Kowloon Regional Crime Unit. Just two weeks after the fire I was drafted into the Special Investigation Team of Crime, Kowloon West. Our sole mandate within a six-month period was to investigate the Garley Building fire.

This approach to a fire investigation was rare. Under normal circumstances, when a fire causes death, or if the cause is unknown or suspicious, it comes under criminal investigation. The gravity and complexity of the Garley fire, and its disastrous impact on so many human lives, required that the investigation be carried out on a regional level.

One did not need direct contact with the blaze to imagine the horrifying ferocity, the cruelty of the flames during that 22 hours of non-stop combustion.

We began our investigation at the scene. The building's interior was left in a desolate ruin. The walls were black, reduced to cinder. There was that pungent odor of something that has been scorched. It hung in the air for months. The puddles of water that remained on the ground were reminders of the valiant effort by firefighters to prevent the building from being gutted.

We listened to the emergency 999 calls that day, heard people trapped, pleading for help. There were cries and sobs, of those aware that their plight was all but helpless.

"The fire is getting near ... It's so hot ... When will the firemen arrive?"

"Please help me ... I'm burning to death now ... Why can't you help me...?"

These were the cries of human despair, by those standing on the brink between life and death. I can never forget them.

We collected remnants of personal belongings from under the charred bodies, wallets, jewelry, watches, identity cards, anything that might help families identify their loved ones. Some of the victims had been burnt to ashes.

Some could be identified only through dental charts or even DNA testing. The police force set up a disaster victims identification unit to help.

More importantly, we concentrated on discovering what caused the fire.

Our preliminary inspection led us to believe the fire originated from sparks, from fragmented metal plates from repair work done in an elevator.

There were bamboo scaffoldings in the elevator shaft. They may have helped to fuel the fire to become an inferno, and may have helped to direct its course.

A simulation was carried out in an open area at a fire station in East Kowloon, in an effort to reconstruct the fire accident and corroborate some of our deductions about why and how the fire broke out.

Analysts from the Forensic Science Division of the Government Laboratory also joined the experiment to share their expertise.

We laid out the scene, as carefully as possible to approximate the conditions at the Garley Building at the time the fire broke out and discover how the fire spread. We tried to recreate the scene of workers welding metals on the upper floors.

These were our deduction.

At the very beginning, the bamboo scaffolding inside the elevator shaft was ignited by sparks and the high-temperature metal crumbs that fell from the 11th floor, where the renovation work was underway.

The fire turned violent, engulfing the entire elevator shaft, making its way into the lobby where it gained additional fuel from piled up planks and other construction materials.

The ferocious flames raging through the lower floors spread into to the adjacent warehouse of a department store, and crawled into other elevator shafts.

In the meantime, the bamboo scaffolding inside the elevator shaft had guided the fire from the lower levels all the way into the upper floors, and to offices and shops.

What took place is called the "stack effect". The elevators shaft turned into a chimney, spreading the fire quickly, as it consumed the available oxygen and burned with ever-growing intensity.

Firefighters could not outrun the fire and the smoke. Quickly the lower floors were ravaged so that no one could go in or out and the upper floors of the 16-story building were out of reach of the Fire Department's scaling ladder.

There was an even more painful reality. Not one automatic-sprinkler system had been installed anywhere in the Garley Building.

The lessons came out clearly during the investigation. The workers doing the renovations bore much of the responsibility for the fire. They had failed to take adequate precautions and should have been more alert to the dangers.

We scanned the videotape from the only closed circuit television that emerged unscathed from the fire. The video camera was located at the department store. It was clear that people did not respond appropriately to the danger. As smoke began pouring into the room, some could be seen moving slowly through the enclosure.

That indifference among people facing potential mortal danger proved to be one of the factors contributing to the high casualty count. Some of the victims may have taken flight and made it to safety had they been more conscious of their imminent peril.

For a calamity as grave as this, one of the most important jobs for police was to assist the commission of inquiry into the Garley Building fire. The committee was chaired by Justice Woo Kwok-hing, and accorded legal standing and independence from the government. Experts summoned of the inquiry attended under legal compulsion to give testimony.

The committee played a role as a third party to inquire deeply and extensively the origin and course of the fire disaster. Also on the agenda was a review of the crisis management performance of the administration. The objective was to discover what lessons were to be learned from the fire.

The Garley Building incident exposed the grievous inadequacy of lack of fire safety facilities in old commercial buildings and the far-below-standard fire safety requirements.

Amendments were made to the Building Management Ordinance and Fire Safety (Commercial Premises) Ordinance. The amendments were passed six months after the fire. Standards for fire safety facilities were subsequently upgraded.

Furthermore, people grew more aware of the need to remain alert and protect themselves in the face of a fire.

Sadly, history has been repeated, through another heart rending disaster.

In December 1990, a No 4 alarm fire broke out in "caged apartments" in a tenement building in Sham Shui Po, causing six deaths and leaving 50 injured.

In April 1997, a No 3 alarm fire broke out in a residential building in Mei Foo Sun Chuen in Lai Chi Kok, leaving nine deaths and 36 injured. Most of the victims died from smoke inhalation.

In the most recent fire on Fa Yuen Street, what should be noted is the danger that had been exposed a year ago. A 2010 fire almost at the exact location of this year's fire should have provided clues as to what fire safety measures should have been improved or moved. Even though the 2010 fire was deliberately set, a careful investigation should have uncovered the risks.

I suppose it is because people are prone to forget the lessons learned after they become distanced by time from any tragedy. They lower their guards as life returns to normal. They have yet to raise and reinforce crisis awareness. The public had failed to learn lessons that were there to be learned, then the next fire accident broke out.

The administration should also be accountable for its slack enforcement of regulations.

Today, when I walked past some of those omnipresent hawker stalls in Mong Kok, I was surprised to see the space they are permitted to occupy according to stipulations set out by the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department. Apparently the regulations were only truly enforced after the Fa Yuen Street fire. Too late.

(HK Edition 12/16/2011 page4)