{"id":309685,"date":"2025-11-27T06:27:04","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T06:27:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/309685\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T06:27:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T06:27:04","slug":"hong-kong-fire-death-toll-rises-to-44-with-279-still-missing-authorities-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/309685\/","title":{"rendered":"Hong Kong fire death toll rises to 44 with 279 still missing, authorities say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Renovation materials under scrutinypublished at 04:29 GMT<\/p>\n<p>04:29 GMT<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As some of the buildings in Wang Fuk Court continue to burn, the materials used in their renovation have come under scrutiny.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">No matter the cause of the fire, proper netting on the buildings&#8217; exterior would have been key to preventing the spread of fire, Jason Poon, chairman of construction NGO Chinat Monitor, told Mandarin news outlet Initium Media.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Substandard netting could cause fire to spread rapidly, Mr Poon said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Another engineer told Initium Media he believes that the vast majority of mesh netting used in construction across Hong Kong are not made of fire-retardant material.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There are also often cardboard, debris and thinner found on the scaffolding, which along with dry weather could hasten the spread of fire, the engineer said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Earlier today, fire officials noted the &#8220;unusual&#8221; presence of &#8220;extremely inflammable&#8221; styrofoam boards covering the windows of the Wang Fuk Court apartment blocks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Renovation materials under scrutinypublished at 04:29 GMT 04:29 GMT As some of the buildings in Wang Fuk Court&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-309685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}