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Accidents and personal safety
OpinionLetters

Letters | Why Hong Kong’s housing market is unfazed by concerns over building quality

  • Inspections of old buildings and improvements in technology reduce the fear of building collapses
  • Despite incidents past and present involving illegal structures and construction defects, the real estate sector is leading the rebound in Hong Kong’s economy

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A view of the Hong Kong skyline from residential buildings in Tseung Kwan O. Photo: Sun Yeung
Letters

I enclose my views on the poll question published in these columns on July 11, asking if “future buyers will have doubts about the quality of construction projects”.

In 1972, heavy rains precipitated a landslide in the Mid-Levels and destroyed a building, killing 67 people. In 2008, a balcony of a 1960s tenement building in Kwun Tong collapsed due to illegal construction. In 2010, a dilapidated building collapsed in To Kwa Wan, leading to four fatalities.
In 2017, poor maintenance was one of the causes of the collapse of a balcony of a 1940s tenement building in Hung Hom during a rainstorm that triggered an amber warning. Fortunately there were no casualties.
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The To Kwa Wan incident prompted the Buildings Department to launch Operation Building Bright and inspect all buildings aged 30 years or above, with around 1,000 target buildings being identified as needing inspection. Since then, the Buildings Department inspects a certain number of buildings every year for structural defects.

Today, technology is available that can detect and reveal the possibility of a building collapse. It uses a radar technique called Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar to measure deformations on the surface of the Earth.

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These unfortunate incidents largely involved tong lau or tenement buildings; active inspections by the Buildings Department since the To Kwa Wan incident and availability of technology to provide early warnings of such mishaps negate the fear of building collapses due to structural defects.
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