Satellites reveal Hong Kong building 'sinking fast' before collapse that killed four

A scientist believes lives could have been saved in 2010 - when four people died after a building collapsed in To Kwa Wan - if the Hong Kong government had been using satellite technology showing the five-storey block of flats had been subsiding at a worrying rate before the accident.

Block J of 45 Ma Tau Wai Road was apparently dilapidated, with bent metal support columns, and undergoing maintenance when it crumbled and was reduced to a pile of rubbish within seconds on January 29, 2010. Four people inside the building were crushed to death.

However, Dr Daniele Perissin, who served as an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Institute of Space and Earth Information Science until last year, says technology exists today that could have spotted early signs of problems at the 53-year-old block of flats.

Surveyors and engineers could have been sent promptly to examine the building had government departments monitored its health more closely, he says. “An in-situ survey driven by the warning could have revealed the possibility of collapse, potentially saving four lives.”

The Italian academic is the author of an advanced software program that can detect tiny movements in the ground to provide early warnings of subsidence.