On Nov. 26, 2025, a fire tore through Wang Fuk Court while the estate was undergoing major renovations. Seven of its eight towers were engulfed, killing 168 people in the deadliest fire in Hong Kong history. In response, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee, who is backed by Beijing, appointed an independent commission to investigate the cause of the blaze and the failures that contributed to the disaster.
The commission began hearings in March 2026 and held its final session on Friday, with closing submissions from Victor Dawes, the senior counsel representing the commission.
Hong Kong’s fire inquiry concludes the disaster was preventable and foreseeable
The commission’s central conclusion is that the fire could have been prevented and could have been foreseen, yet neither happened, Dawes said. He called the blaze one of the gravest tragedies in Hong Kong’s history, one that remains difficult to comprehend or accept, and said a disaster of this magnitude should never have happened and must never happen again.
The commission, he said, will not forget the residents who lost loved ones, the firefighters who risked their lives entering the burning towers, or the neighbors who opened their doors to shelter others as the fire spread.
Dawes directed the commission’s harshest criticism at the renovation contractor, Prestige Construction and Engineering. The company knew the materials it was using were dangerous, he said, but used them anyway to cut costs. It then deceived the government repeatedly and treated fire safety as if it did not exist. As a result, nearly every fire safety measure at the estate failed on the day of the blaze. Dawes also faulted the project’s consultant, Will Power Architects, for failing in its oversight role and showing the same disregard for fire safety.
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No Hong Kong government department was monitoring fire risk at Wang Fuk Court
Not a single government department was supervising the fire risk at Wang Fuk Court, Dawes said. He named the bodies that must answer for the failure: the Independent Checking Unit under the Housing Bureau, the Buildings Department, which regulates private construction, and the Fire Services Department.
The government’s departments and regulatory mechanisms were riddled with problems that went undetected, Dawes said. The system relies on the honesty of contractors, departments notify sites in advance before inspections, and when residents filed complaints, no department followed up. Many of these loopholes came to light only after the fire. Government departments had ample opportunity to correct the hazards, he said, but failed to seize it.
Dawes stressed that the commission is not accusing the government of starting the fire. But the public believed the government would protect them, and the result was a gap between that expectation and reality. The contractor’s deception directly caused the fire and bears primary responsibility for it, he said, while the government’s inadequate supervision leaves it with an “unshirkable responsibility” of its own.
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The contractor’s sustained deception drew the commission’s most severe censure
The fire resulted from cut corners, substandard work, and sustained deception of both regulators and the estate’s property owners, Dawes said, conduct far beyond ordinary carelessness. The commission delivered its most severe censure to the contractor and the consultant.
Turning to the government departments involved, Dawes questioned the assumption that the construction industry could police itself. No system in the world is watertight, he said, but it should not have taken a fire for everyone to realize the stakeholders were left to supervise themselves. The government disputed the existence of a regulatory vacuum, but the commission found that residents’ complaints fell into a gray zone where no one took responsibility.
The hearings repeatedly invoked the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London, where the parties involved spent years deflecting blame onto one another. The same pattern appeared at Wang Fuk Court, Dawes said, and the commission criticized individual parties accordingly. The disaster involved a chain of interlocking failures, and no single party bears all the blame. Some of those criticized declined to respond to the submissions, but every criticism rests on solid evidence they cannot refute.
The commission’s report will anchor accountability and legal consequences
Dawes closed by saying the lessons of the tragedy are hard and heavy, but facing them and delivering real reform is the best way to honor the dead. No other community can be allowed to suffer the same fate. The commission’s report on the Wang Fuk Court fire, he said, will stand as the most authoritative record of the disaster and provide the firmest foundation for accountability and legal consequences.
