Update | Answers demanded over collapse of green roof at Hong Kong City University
Education minister Eddie Ng demands full report as experts suspect roof was overloaded after vegetation was placed on top
Hong Kong’s education minister demanded a full report from City University after a giant, green rooftop at its Kowloon Tong campus collapsed without warning yesterday, injuring three people in a hall that was filled with hundreds of students taking an exam just a few days ago.
The university set up a three-member committee to investigate what went wrong at its sports centre after Secretary for Education Ng Hak-kim ordered “a very detailed, comprehensive and urgent investigation of the whole thing”.
Experts believed the collapsed rooftop, covering an area of 1400 sq meters, with newly-added green pitch last year, was attributed to overloading as the rooftop with a loading capacity of 73 kilograms per square metre, was about at least five times less than structurally capable of holding vegetation of at least 300 to 400 kilograms per sq metre.
The legality of the green structures’ addition is also put into question as the university admitted that they did not submit any buildings plans of the structures to the Buildings Department for approval. But Cheng Ka-hing, the department’s senior building surveyor said any alterations that affect the building’s structure required the owner to submit the relevant buildings plans to the department.