Lax fire safety laws in Hong Kong leaving villagers at risk, Ombudsman investigation finds

A legal loophole has allowed over 90 per cent of village house owners who built their homes since 2006 to opt out of constructing emergency vehicular access to their properties, posing a possible safety risk for villagers, a year-long investigation by the Ombudsman has revealed.

A father who lost two sons in a fire on the third storey of their village home said the government should regulate village houses like any other building.

“I think the lives of people living in villages are just as important as people living in city buildings,” said Simon Watkiss, an actor from Britain whose sons Elliot and Frankie died aged seven and eight in 2012, when a fire broke out in the family’s Pat Heung Upper Village home while they were sleeping.

A fire truck was unable to get to the house to tackle the blaze because the emergency vehicular access path was only three metres wide – half the width it should have been, Watkiss said.

He said had the truck been able to reach their home, the boys could have been rescued from the third floor using the truck’s retractable ladder. Instead, firefighters were forced to park the truck on the main road, run to the house and break down the front door, which took “far too long”.

“Do we have to wait for an accident to happen before action is taken?” Watkiss said.