Fire inquiry

An inquiry heard that a fire services company conducted no on-site checks and merely rubber-stamped 85 shutdown notices for a housing estate's hose reel system before Hong Kong's deadliest blaze in decades. A Fire Services Department official testified that another contractor failed to alert authorities after finding the estate's fire water tanks drained and power switches for hose reels and alarms turned off. The revelations emerged at the ninth hearing into the November fire in Tai Po that killed 168 people.