Hong Kong Canadians reeling after deadly highrise inferno

By Canadian Press on November 26, 2025.

VANCOUVER — Canadians with roots in Hong Kong are watching in horror at news of fire that tore through seven highrise towers in the Chinese enclave, leaving dozens dead and hundreds more missing.

Vancouver resident Albert Wai Yip Chan, a former member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, says the fire risk in the city’s tall buildings has always been a concern, especially with many lacking sprinkler systems.

He’s been watching videos online showing the fires engulf buildings in flames and smoke in his hometown.

Hundreds of residents were evacuated as the blaze spread across a housing complex in the Tai Po district, with at least 36 people reported dead and about 280 missing.

Chan says the fire would be one of the deadliest in Hong Kong’s history, bringing back memories of the Garley Building fire in 1996 that killed 41 people and injured twice that.

Aiken Lau, a former Hong Kong banker and now resident of Coquitlam, B.C., says he remembers crying as a teenager about the Garley Building fire, and the same feelings are emerging again 29 years later.

Officials have said the Tai Po fire started on Wednesday in external bamboo scaffolding on a 32-storey tower and later spread because of windy conditions.

Lau says there are many questions about the cause and how the deadly flames could have moved so fast.

He says all he is hoping for is that the death toll will stop climbing.

“When I dug into the history of deadly fires in Hong Kong, the fire that occurred in Sham Shui Po in 1962 is the worst one, which has killed 44 people and left hundreds of people homeless, but I wasn’t born at that time, and I didn’t know much of it,” said Lau.

“But I am extremely worried that the latest fire might break the record of 1962,” said Lau. “It’s devastating.”

— with files from The Associated Press

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 26, 2025.

Nono Shen, The Canadian Press