More than 150 firefighters battle massive blaze at Hong Kong recycling facility

A huge blaze engulfed a recycling storage site in Yuen Long in the early hours of Sunday, taking firefighters some 10 hours to bring under control due to a lack of water supply.

Firefighters received a report at 12.33am that a blaze had broken out at the site in Shek Wu Wai. They arrived at the scene nine minutes later, only to discover that the nearest water source was a kilometre away.

The fire was deemed severe due to the rapid spread of flames.

“Firefighters faced difficulties in the mission. At the site there was a lot of plastic, hardware, car parts, compressed gas cylinders,” Leung Chi-hung, deputy chief fire officer of New Territories North, said at the scene.

“There were several explosion because of the compressed gas cylinders.”

He also said that the site was remote and the firefighters needed to look for the nearest water source about a kilometre away to put out the fire.