The eight milk tea-coloured towers of Wang Fuk Court were special sentinels to many locals in Hong Kong’s Tai Po district.
Residents say that whenever they saw the blocks emerging into view on the northern-bound left side of Tolo Highway on their daily commute after work, they knew they were back home.
Home was their idyllic estate with its winding bicycle lanes and a canal bisecting it, far from the frenzy of Kowloon.
But now the landmark is blanketed by black soot, battered bamboo and frayed strands of green netting after a fire on Wednesday set seven of the eight blocks in the cluster ablaze, making the tragedy Hong Kong’s deadliest conflagration in seven decades.
Built in 1983, Wang Fuk Court was under the then-colonial government’s Home Ownership Scheme, which sells subsidised public housing flats to eligible low or middle-income families at a significant discount on market prices.
The 1,984 two-bedroom flats, sized from 431 to 485 sq ft, were heavily sought-after by many young families earning less than the monthly income limit of HK$6,500 back then who could not afford a unit on the private market, and many others who were longing to move up the social ladder and leave their public rental homes.
