A 56-year-old woman was recently found dead inside a Hong Kong flat which caught fire. Firefighters, on the other hand, set out a third-alarm blaze in the building.
In a report from South China Morning Post, the city's Fire Services Department was alerted at 5.21 pm when the fire broke out on the 10th floor in block five of Emerald Green residential estate in Yuen Long on Shap Pat Heung Road.
Eventually, firefighters managed to arrive four minutes later. At around 6.01 pm, the department decided to upgrade the incident's status to alarm No 3 - on a scale of one to five, with five being the most severe - to allocate more resources.
They used a turntable ladder to free three residents stranded on a balcony from a flat next to the one on fire. Another 20 were helped to leave the building from some floors.
Two residents suffered from smoke inhalation and were immediately taken to Pok Oi Hospital. The fire was finally put out by 7.08 pm, the department said.
Inside the 600 sq ft flat that caught fire, the body of the woman was found in a corridor linking a room to the living room. Her identity has not yet been confirmed, The Star Online reports.
More than 70 firefighters and ambulance crew members with 19 department vehicles were deployed, official reports suggest. As of press time, Hong Kong authorities were investigating the cause of the fire.
This is not the first case of a fire incident in the city, at least for this month. A few weeks ago, firefighters battled a third-alarm blaze that broke out at a bread and confectionery factory in Hong Kong. Although no casualties had been reported so far, the damages to properties proved to be hefty.
The fire began at 8.48 am at the Garden Company's largest factory in Sham Tseng in the New Territories, according to a statement from a government spokeswoman.
An hour later, the Fire Services Department upgraded the blaze's status to alarm No 3 in hopes of allocating more resources.
At 11.29 am, the department said the blaze had been mostly put out, with one bread-making machine burned down in the process.
More than 50 employees in the building made their way to safety. The cause of the fire was still under investigation.
The Garden Company's chief executive officer, Tong Lap-kei, said the fire had started on the factory's 7th floor, where it produced English breakfast muffins for McDonald's.
"Smoke and dust from a chimney rose to the top and caught fire, but we are still trying to look into it," he added.
