Testy two years end for fire chief

Outgoing fire services director Leung Wai-hung said Hong Kong faced both natural and man-made disasters - the pandemic and social unrest - during his two-year term, as he recalled his nearly 37-year-long career of being a firefighter before starting retirement tomorrow.

Leung said that despite the troubles faced in his two years as the head of firefighters and ambulancemen, his term of office has been very fulfilling.

In the months before his retirement he was working in the command room, leading firemen and ambulancemen to fight the fifth wave of the pandemic every day.

Leung said when Queen Elizabeth Hospital became a designated Covid hospital this month, he ordered ambulancemen to cancel their leave in the following five days, so they could help transfer non-Covid patients from other hospitals. "Everyone had to be on duty, and we had to deploy over 300 ambulances in those five days," he said.

Leung said the ambulance team has been under enormous pressure with the fifth wave seeing hundreds of thousands of Covid patients, and only 20 percent of ambulances could arrive within their mission time of 12 minutes early this month. However, he said the situation has improved of late.

"This broke our record at one stage there was no ambulance available and a patient had to wait for 39 hours," Leung said.

That did not mean that people had abused the service as a fever could be serious, he said, "but when we only have limited resources, we have to prioritize cases."

Despite the heavy workload faced by FSD staff, their request for the same salary as the police force was not granted.

"I understand that our colleagues are disappointed, but we respect the mechanism. It's natural that we feel we deserve better treatment but the government has already reviewed the grade structure," Leung said.

Leung was at one stage embroiled in controversy for calling protesters "cockroaches" in an internal meeting during the 2019 social unrest.

"What I said in the internal meeting was my frank thoughts. I hate those lawless rioters and I will continue to scold them. I took office at the end of the social unrest, which was a man-made disaster followed by the Covid-19 pandemic," he said.

"These crises over the two years made my work very fulfilling."

Leung joined the FSD as a station officer in September 1985 and was promoted to deputy chief fire officer in October 2013. He became chief fire officer in July 2015 and was promoted to deputy director of fire services in February 2017, before being appointed the director in April 2020.

Andy Yeung Yan-kin, the current deputy director of fire services, will take up Leung's post tomorrow.

Leung said he will take a break first, but he did not rule out the possibility of being a volunteer to help fight the epidemic when necessary.