By Jessie Pang
HONG KONG, Feb 6 (Reuters) – A fire engulfing eight vehicles outside a Hong Kong wholesale food market was put out on Friday, according to the fire services department, after plumes of black smoke could be seen rising above the western part of the city’s Kowloon peninsula.
A Reuters witness later saw two burnt lorries and one van in a parking lot outside the wholesale market, with the fire having been extinguished by several fire trucks.
A police spokesman told Reuters that a total of eight trucks had caught fire outside a fish wholesale market. Two people were sent to hospital, including one man who is in a coma, he added.
The Hong Kong government has come under scrutiny since a deadly blaze killed 168 people last November at the Wang Fuk Court apartment complex in Hong Kong’s northern Tai Po district, with substandard building mesh and other construction materials blamed for the tragedy.
An independent committee is now looking into the fire, the city’s worst in decades, including systemic flaws that may have led to safety lapses that caused the blaze, with an open hearing to commence next month.
(Reporting by Jessie Pang, James Pomfret, Clare Jim and Hong Kong bureau; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
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