80 dead after Hong Kong's worst fire in decades
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 November 2025
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The authorities in Hong Kong say more than 80 deaths have now been confirmed after the city's worst fire in decades. Officials think that number will grow, with more than 200 people still missing. It's unclear what caused the fire but the eight residential blocks were undergoing renovations. The contractor is reported to have breached safety requirements on multiple occasions during construction projects. We speak to a former firefighter who is an expert in tower fires.
Also on the programme: How Israel's offensive on Lebanon has continued, despite a ceasefire; and a scientific study casts new light on how cats came to be domesticated and part of the daily life of so many human beings.
(Photo: Smoke billows from an apartment fire in the Tai Po district of Hong Kong, China, 27 November 2025. Credit: Leung Man Hei/ EPA Shutterstock)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.0 | Hello, welcome to the program. This is News Hour from the BBC World Service. I'm Paul Henley. We're coming to you live from London, coming up a bit later on. President Putin says Russia has no plan to attack Europe. |
| 0:22.9 | Russia does not plan to attack Europe. We have never planned it. But if Europe wants to hear it from us, |
| 0:30.0 | we can put it on paper. Not everyone, though, is convinced we'll be hearing later from France. |
| 0:35.5 | First, the sheer scale of the fire in eight towers of a Hong Kong housing development was unmistakable. |
| 0:42.5 | Smoke and flames engulfed high-rise blocks shrouded during renovations in bamboo scaffolding and green protective mesh. |
| 0:50.5 | More than 80 people are known now to have been killed, nearly 200, are listed as missing in what was the city's worst fire in many decades. |
| 0:59.1 | Hong Kong police are known to have arrested three people, including two bosses of a maintenance company responsible for the housing estate. |
| 1:07.2 | It was more than a day ago that the blaze took hold. This is from a video verified by the BBC, shot at the very start of the fire. |
| 1:17.3 | And you can hear a man shouting that fires reach the fourth floor, urging people to get out. |
| 1:22.5 | There's a pause and then the sound of other panicked shouting, |
| 1:26.1 | and you can hear him saying it's reached the eighth floor now, |
| 1:28.7 | he swears and says we need to get back, I can't handle it anymore. |
| 1:33.9 | In that video clip, you can see just to the right of the frame |
| 1:36.7 | a couple of firefighters first coming into view. |
| 1:40.3 | Jason Kong is a resident of Tower Block 1 |
| 1:42.8 | in the Wang Fouk Court complex. |
| 1:50.6 | One neighbour said he could still not find his wife. |
| 1:54.1 | Some said they are safe. |
| 1:55.8 | I know some are still inside the building. |
| 1:58.0 | Why is there no one saving them? |
| 2:00.1 | Are we waiting for them? How should we deal with this? |
... |
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