Fire safety authorities plan tougher regulations on storage units following Ngau Tau Kok fire
Fire department reveals plans to bring in stricter measures after last year’s killer blaze in Ngau Tau Kok, as well as a specialist mountain rescue team
Revealing the plan yesterday, the Fire Services Department chief Daryl Li Kin-yat said he hoped the bill would be tabled in the Legislative Council by April and implemented by the end of the year.
“We are now relying on the existing ordinance to ensure the safety of the mini-storage facilities ... we can ask the operators to implement some management measures,” Li said.
“There should be some form of control regarding what items can be stored in the storage units. The licensing regime is only a way forward.”
Li stressed it was a preliminary consideration and a working group headed by the Security Bureau was studying ways to improve safety and operations of the industry.
The storage industry welcomed the proposed measures and said it could restore customers’ confidence.
Another senior security source said the licensing regime was necessary as the existing ordinance could not fully resolve all fire risks found in these cubicles.
“In one extreme case, the storage outlet was situated in the centre on a floor of an industrial building, sealed by four walls without any windows. The operator could not really solve the window problem,” the source said.
The licence could also require operators to monitor the unit around the clock to ensure no dangerous goods were stored.
“Operators might bear legal consequences if any prohibited items were found,” the source said.
Alexander Chung, the managing director of Hong Kong Storage, said he hoped the government could roll out a comprehensive licensing mechanism as the existing rules were difficult to meet due to limited floor space.
“Requirements such as keeping a 2.4-metre gap between zones are unrealistic for us to carry out and we would only transfer the cost to customers,” said Chung. “The licencing and the proposed management measures could ensure the customers’ safety.”
Meanwhile, the department also unveiled its plans to create a new Mountain Rescue Support Team. Six firefighters who received 10 weeks’ training in Switzerland last April will be stationed in different fire stations to train up a team of about 162 members in the coming months. They will also benefit from a lot of new gear, including a drone equipped with a thermal imaging camera that will boost search ability during night operations.
The rescue team comes as a response to the fire service being caught off-guard during rescue operations on the city’s coldest day in six decades last January.
