Elderly man dies in blaze

An 82-year-old man burned to death after accidentally setting himself on fire with a cigarette lighter yesterday.

The blaze started in the early hours of the morning in Yip Bing-yu's room on the first floor of a three-storey home for the elderly run by the Kei Tak Institute of Old Age in To Yuen Wai, Tuen Mun.

His paralysed roommate, Ng Sang, 67, was asleep and there were 36 other elderly occupants and two nurses at the home.

Nurse Chong Chun-lin, 41, ran from the second floor to the first floor and found dense smoke billowing out of Yip's room.

'She poured water on to Yip but the fire did not stop and she then covered him with a blanket,' the owner of the home, Cheung Wan-ping, said.

The blaze was put out before firemen arrived and the other occupants were not affected.