In a grim update from Hong Kong, firefighters have discovered numerous additional bodies in a meticulous search of a heavily damaged high-rise complex, where a devastating fire recently ravaged seven buildings. This catastrophic event, one of the deadliest in the city’s history, has now claimed 128 lives, with many residents still missing. In the aftermath, authorities have arrested eight individuals linked to the ongoing renovation of the towers.

According to Andy Yeung, the Director of Hong Kong Fire Services, the investigation revealed that several fire alarms in the complex, which predominantly housed elderly residents, failed to activate when tested. Yeung did not specify the number of non-functional alarms or comment on the condition of the remaining systems.

The blaze spread rapidly between buildings, primarily fueled by foam panels and bamboo scaffolding, which were reportedly covered with netting by a construction company. This combination allowed the fire to jump from one structure to another with alarming speed.

On Friday, law enforcement apprehended seven men and one woman, aged between 40 and 63, as part of the investigation. The individuals include scaffolding subcontractors, directors of an engineering consultancy, and project managers overseeing the renovation efforts, according to a statement by the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Firefighting crews focused their search efforts on apartments from which emergency calls had been made during the inferno but remained unreachable during its uncontrolled spread, explained Derek Armstrong Chan, Deputy Director of Hong Kong Fire Services. It took the firefighters an entire day to bring the fire under control, and it wasn’t completely extinguished until Friday morning, a full 40 hours after it initially broke out.

Even two days after the fire began, smoke continued to drift out of the charred skeletons of the buildings from the occasional flare-up.

More bodies may be found

Some 200 people remain unaccounted for, Secretary for Security Chris Tang told reporters. That includes 89 bodies that have not yet been identified. Yet more bodies might be recovered, authorities said, though crews have finished a search for anyone living trapped inside.

More than 2,300 firefighters and medical personnel were involved in the operation, and 12 firefighters were among the 79 people injured, Yeung said. One firefighter was also killed, he had said previously.

Katy Lo, 70, a resident of Wang Fuk Court, was not home when the fire started Wednesday. She rushed back roughly an hour later to see that the blaze had spread to her building.

“That’s my home.… I still can’t really believe what happened,” Lo said on Friday as she registered for government assistance for affected households. “This all still feels like a bad dream.”

The dead included two Indonesian migrant workers, the Indonesian foreign ministry said Thursday. About 11 other migrants from the country who were working as domestic helpers in the apartment complex remained missing, Indonesian Consul General Yul Edison said.

The government said all official flags in the city will be lowered to half staff in mourning from Saturday to Monday. The city’s leader, John Lee, will lead a three-minute silence Saturday from the government headquarters.

The apartment complex of eight, 31-story buildings in Tai Po district, a suburb near Hong Kong’s border with mainland China, was built in the 1980s and had been undergoing a major renovation. It had almost 2,000 apartments and some 4,800 residents.

Highly flammable foam panels blamed

Three men — the directors and an engineering consultant of a construction company — were arrested Thursday on suspicion of manslaughter, and police said company leaders were suspected of gross negligence.

Police have not identified the company where the suspects worked, but documents posted to the homeowners association’s website showed that the Prestige Construction & Engineering Company was in charge of renovations. Police have seized boxes of documents from the company, where phones rang unanswered Thursday.

In addition to the new arrests Friday, the anti-corruption agency also searched the suspects’ offices and seized relevant documents and bank records.

Police said they found highly flammable plastic foam panels attached to the windows on each floor of the one unaffected tower. The panels were believed to have been installed by the construction company but the purpose was not clear.

Preliminary investigations showed the fire started on a lower-level scaffolding net of one of the buildings, and then spread rapidly as the foam panels caught fire, said Tang, the secretary for security.

“The blaze ignited the foam panels, causing the glass to shatter and leading to a swift intensification of the fire and its spread into the interior spaces,” Tang said.

Authorities suspected some materials on the exterior walls of the high-rise buildings did not meet fire resistance standards, allowing the unusually fast spread of the fire.

Authorities planned immediate inspections of housing complexes undergoing major renovations to ensure scaffolding and construction materials meet safety standards.

The fire was the deadliest in Hong Kong in decades. A 1996 fire in a commercial building in Kowloon killed 41 people. A warehouse fire in 1948 killed 176 people, according to the South China Morning Post.

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Researcher Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed to this report.

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This story has been updated to correct the name of a fire services official to Derek Armstrong Chan, not Wong Ka Wing.