SURVIVORS of Hong Kong’s worst fire in more than half a century say they escaped only by luck and instinct in total darkness, choking in smoke and with no alarms.
The death toll has now climbed to 94 and is expected to rise as hundreds remain unaccounted for.
More than 900 residents have been driven into shelters, many with nothing but the clothes they were wearing as the Wang Fuk Court complex turned into a towering furnace.
Lau Yu Hung, 78, said he and his wife survived only because he happened to glance out the bathroom window, one of the few not blocked by renovation foam.
Outside, flames had already leapt up the building next door.
He told The New York Times: “Nobody warned us. No alarm went off. We escaped by ourselves.”
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The couple fled down multiple flights as the fire raced up the facades and into homes.
The blaze erupted on Wednesday afternoon, starting in bamboo scaffolding and construction netting before ripping across seven of the complex’s eight residential towers.
Fire crews battled the flames through the night and into Thursday.
Thick smoke still poured from several towers by the evening as flames continued to burn deep inside four buildings.
Authorities say contact had been lost with 279 people at one stage on Thursday.
Authorities say at least 94 people are dead, with 51 found at the scene and others later dying in hospital.
Another 76 are injured, 16 are in critical condition and 25 are listed as serious.
Nearly 280 people remain missing as full-scale rescue work continues inside the charred towers of Wang Fuk Court in Tai Po district.
And more than 50 calls for help to fire services remain unresolved.
Hero firefighter Ho Wai-ho, 37, has been named as the first victim of the tragedy.
Winter and Sandy Chung, who escaped early, said sparks flew around them as they evacuated Wednesday afternoon.
And although they were safe, they were worried about their home.
Winter, 75, said: “I couldn’t sleep the entire night.”
Outside the cordon, families waited in horror, refreshing an unofficial “SOS map” built by desperate locals.
The page, powered by a Google spreadsheet, showed each flat as a coloured square: green for safe, red for SOS, missing or dead.
By Thursday morning, more than 100 squares had turned red.
The entries on the SOS map were stark: a woman in her 90s who had stopped responding, a child believed to be alone on the 18th floor, nine cats and a dog trapped one level above.
And on the 27th floor of another block, a single word: “dead.”
Among those glued to the map was former Hong Kong firefighter Raymond Cheung, now in Melbourne.
With 18 years of frontline experience, he said he could almost feel the heat and smoke his former colleagues were facing.
He told ABC Australia: “It’s very hard to accept these numbers. We know worse news may still come.”
Relatives have been bracing for the worst, with some families having kept vigil for more than 12 hours.
Another bystander, 79-year-old Lau Wan King – unrelated to the survivor Mr. Lau – said he had called his brother-in-law on the eighth floor moments after the fire broke.
His relative said he was trapped in smoke, and they never spoke again.
“There is not much hope now,” he said.
Resident Lawrence Lee spent the night at a shelter awaiting news of his wife.
He said: “When the fire started, I told her on the phone to escape. But once she left the flat, the corridor and stairs were all filled with smoke and it was all dark.”
She turned back, and he hasn’t heard from her since.
Another survivor known as Wan told CNN he spent half an hour unaware the blaze was spreading toward his eighth-floor flat.
Only the sound of people screaming made him check the window.
“The instant I opened the window, I saw the smoke,” he said.
He grabbed his two dogs and wallet and bolted, recalling that the stairwell “smelled of gas”.
Only minutes later the fire was raised to a level 4 alarm – then to level 5, the city’s highest, by early evening.
Residents later said alarms didn’t ring in multiple blocks.
Some reported no knock on the door, and no instruction to flee.
A resident surnamed Au said his family smelled fire and heard bamboo poles collapsing outside, but “their building alarm didn’t ring.”