‘We can’t build Hong Kong on fatalities’: Chris Patten’s plea after lift crash killed 12
- The 1993 accident resulted in the city’s first corporate manslaughter conviction
- Brakes on the overloaded lift failed, causing it to drop 17 floors and kill all onboard
“12 die in lift plunge,” ran a South China Morning Post headline on June 3, 1993. “It is the biggest toll from an accident on a Hongkong construction site,” the story read. “Yesterday, 14 men […] rode the passenger lift to the 20th floor” of a building site in Quarry Bay. “Two got off. They reported hearing a loud crack just before the cage began plummeting back to the third floor podium.
“Firemen who arrived at the partly-completed building said most of the victims, the youngest a 16-year-old on a school holiday job, were unconscious.”
North Point Fire Station officer Tong Kwai-lam told the Post: “There were three layers of humans who were mostly unconscious. Their hands and legs were entangled. I heard some people on top moaning and shouting for help but the ones at the bottom looked to be dead already.”
Seven workers were certified dead on arrival at Tang Shiu Kin Hospital in Wan Chai. The remaining five were transferred to Queen Mary Hospital, where they later died.
“We can’t build Hongkong on fatalities,” commented governor Chris Patten on June 4.