Three years after explosion at Hong Kong garage, displaced residents seek help to fix their homes
Owners at Wong Tai Sin building appeal to government bodies to waive repair fees or offer subsidies to help make it habitable again
More than three years after a deadly explosion at a Wong Tai Sin garage, property owners in the building above it are still in the arduous process of fixing up the place where they used to live and work.
The severe damage to Wing On House was estimated to cost millions of dollars to repair. And owners in the six-storey building, mostly elderly, said they hoped the Buildings Department, having done much of the repair work, could cover the cost.
“I hope the Buildings Department ... will understand our miserable situation and exempt us from paying the maintenance cost,” 74-year-old Lam Chan Choi-heung said, speaking in one of her two flats in the building. The ceiling and walls of the flat, where she lived for more than 20 years before the explosion, were still stained black by smoke.
“Now it seems like we were beaten up and became handicapped but we needed to pay for our own medical costs,” she said.
The misfortune began in April 2015, when an explosion – the cause of which has yet to be fully identified – happened in a garage on the ground floor of the six-storey building, on Wan Fung Street. Three people were killed and nine others were injured. A mechanic who worked at the garage, and was allegedly involved in the explosion, will stand trial on manslaughter charges in October.