Tenants claim they were not alerted to fire in building
Tenants of an office block in Central have accused the property's management of failure to alert them after a fire broke out on Monday night.
Tenants of an office block in Central have accused the property's management of failure to alert them after a fire broke out on Monday night.
One office worker who spoke on condition of anonymity said the building's management, Sino Property Services, did not inform staff at his company or others on the same floor.
They realised something was wrong only when the lifts stopped working, he said. "Someone who had a friend in the building rang and said, 'There's a fire'. But there was no fire alarm, so for a few minutes we were confused," he said.
"People rang the building management and then it got very serious, very quickly. The office manager made sure everybody was getting out."
He said he started down more than 20 flights of stairs, with people from other floors who were also evacuating. At one point he got lost in thick smoke.
"It just got hotter and hotter the lower I got," he said. "It is scary when … you have no idea whether you're walking into a fire or if the building's going to blow up."
Sino said it had contacted the police and fire department, but declined to comment on the complaints.
