The raging inferno that consumed Wang Fuk Court in Tai Po was finally declared extinguished on Friday, marking the end of a three-day nightmare that has claimed at least 128 lives and left the city in stunned silence.
As darkness fell on the blackened towers for the first time without fire, hundreds of ordinary Hongkongers quietly gathered along nearby streets, placing white flowers and handwritten messages of grief and encouragement at makeshift memorials.
Parents brought young children who shyly offered hand-drawn thank-you cards and pictures to firefighters, honouring the crews who battled relentlessly to save lives.
Inside the ruins, investigators worked through the night under floodlights, moving carefully among collapsed walls and twisted metal in search of missing residents and crucial evidence that might explain how the blaze spread so catastrophically.
Dozens of local and international journalists remained on site to document every step.
By yesterday afternoon, only 39 of the 128 victims had been formally identified, including one firefighter who perished on duty.
Seventy-nine people are injured, among them eleven firefighters. Of the dead, 108 bodies were recovered at the scene, four died after reaching the hospital, and sixteen charred remains are still inside the building, with police warning that more may yet be found.
Around 200 people remain unaccounted for from the 467 missing-person reports received, many of them duplicates, and while some of the recovered bodies are too badly damaged for immediate identification.
