Windy Yeung was passing through Hong Kong’s northern district of Tai Po on November 26 after a work meeting when she received news that a fire had broken out at the Wang Fuk Court apartment towers. Wanting to see how she could help, Yeung headed to the area and found distressed evacuated residents gathered outside.
A man in his 30s told her he had been trying for more than six hours to reach his father, a resident of the apartment towers, but hadn’t heard from him. He asked Yeung if there was any hope left for his dad.
Yeung, the communication officer of the Hong Kong Church Network for the Poor (HKCNP), said she felt her heart break at the question. Maybe his father was in the hospital, she suggested. Even if they couldn’t do anything and no one could enter the fire, Jesus could, she told him. The man then nodded and teared up.
The blaze that started at one of Wang Fuk Court’s eight 31-story apartment buildings that afternoon grew into Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades. Flames rapidly spread to six other buildings, destroying nearly 2,000 apartments. The fire has killed at least 156 people, including one firefighter, has injured dozens of others, and has displaced thousands of residents. More than 30 people remain missing.
Although firefighters extinguished the flames after more than 40 hours, Hong Kong continues to grapple with the devastation. Amid the grief, local churches have provided shelter and aid even as some church members mourn their own losses in the blaze.
At Tai Po Baptist Church, located minutes away from Wang Fuk Court, more than 60 members of the congregation lost their homes, according to pastor Dustin Yee. During worship services the Sunday after the blaze, senior pastor Root Chau preached on Psalm 46 to remind congregants God is their refuge amid devastation.
At the 11:30 a.m. service, about 300 attendees filled the pews of the second-floor sanctuary. Many congregants wore black, and several cried during the service, which included singing a Cantonese translation of the hymn “In His Presence.”
Chau told the congregants that one member had stayed in the bathroom of her 27th-floor apartment until firefighters rescued her. Church leaders had visited displaced members at temporary shelters. He asked congregants to pray for the church staff members who are helping those suffering from the catastrophe.
Tai Po Baptist prepared its space as a temporary shelter in the aftermath of the blaze, but only one married couple stayed there over a few nights, and another person visited briefly to rest, said Yee. The couple, who don’t attend the church, were too scared to stay in their own home, which was located near Wang Fuk Court, Yee explained. He added that people from Wang Fuk Court preferred to stay at the government-run temporary shelter, where they could more quickly receive information on matters like how to register for new identification documents.
A team of pastoral staff and counselors went to the site for identifying the bodies of fire victims and offered spiritual and emotional support to people who lost loved ones. The church is also providing funds for the displaced, and praying for the bereaved and injured.
Other churches and Christian organizations are offering similar services, and the government is supplying money, short-term hotel stays, and transitional housing for the displaced. Volunteers set up stations at a nearby housing complex to distribute donated items, such as clothes, packs of toilet paper, loaves of sliced bread, and pet supplies.
On the day of the fire, Yeung stayed around Wang Fuk Court from 5 p.m. until around midnight, comforting displaced residents and offering to pray for them. Yeung called some church friends in the area, asking them to bring bedding and clothes to the nearby churches that had opened up as temporary shelters for fire victims.
It is still unclear how the fire started at the apartment towers, which were undergoing renovations at the time. Construction workers had erected bamboo scaffolding over Wang Fuk Court’s eight towers and had covered the scaffolding with green protective netting.
Government authorities believe the blaze started when the netting on one building’s lower floors caught fire. It then spread to highly flammable Styrofoam boards that the construction company had installed outside the building’s windows. The fire-alarm system in the buildings was not working effectively, according to the fire service, leaving many residents unaware of the danger until it was too late to escape. Authorities also found that some of the netting had failed to meet fire safety standards.
Amid an ongoing probe into the fire, police have arrested at least 13 people involved with the renovations for suspected manslaughter. Some of the suspects are also under investigation by Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption for possible graft connected to Wang Fuk Court’s $42 million renovation project.
During the city’s official three-day mourning period, which began on Saturday, Hong Kong and Chinese flags at government buildings flew at half-staff. Citizens grieving the deaths of Wang Fuk Court residents—including at least 10 migrant domestic helpers from Indonesia and the Philippines who died—streamed to a park by the now-charred apartment towers. There they laid white and yellow flowers and wrote notes expressing their sorrow.
South China Morning Post reported that pastor Jenny Lam Yat-kwan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hong Kong Diamond Lutheran Church had lost three family members in the fire. She noted that three young volunteers from a church in Tai Po helped her family as they sought to identify the bodies of loved ones.
“I saw God’s mercy and grace when these little angels quietly accompanied my family since Wednesday,” she told the Post. “They came every day, recognized my folks, and silently accompanied them.”
Although Yeung’s organization, HKCNP, is not directly involved in frontline disaster relief, it convened a Zoom meeting on Friday to connect its affiliated pastors from different districts with Tai Po pastors so they can discuss how to work together. HKCNP has also partnered with herbal-beverage company Hung Fook Tong to place donation boxes at the retailer’s stores across Hong Kong and to collect money for rebuilding victims’ lives. The group also created a spreadsheet listing many free resources, including medical services and counseling, to help the displaced find what they need.
Some pastors—who have kicked into high gear to help Wang Fuk Court victims—feel physically, emotionally, and spiritually weary. Yee is no exception.
“Frankly, I’m feeling tired right now,” he said late Sunday afternoon. “[We] pastors have no experience in doing this large-scale disaster relief and spiritual support.” At the same time, he appreciates the support his church has received from churches overseas, as well as from Tai Po Baptist’s own social service department, which provides counseling for its pastors.
What the church can best provide the grieving community is its presence, Yee said: “The most important thing is to be with them going through this.”
