Under the tree: Tales of survival in Hong Kong’s Tai Po Fire

HONG KONG – A traumatized Filipino mother feels a lucky twist of fate saved her from certain death in the devastating November 26 fire in a Tai Po high-rise residential complex that has killed more than 150 residents. 

As Geralyn sat quietly wearing a mask under a tree seating area on a cold Sunday afternoon, November 30, just minutes away from the fire-hit Wang Fuk Court complex, she told of panic, then a rush of adrenaline, as she scooped her 19-month-old toddler ward while his 67-year-old grandmother followed in a lift as the fire leapt from one tower block to another.

The Tai Po fire was the worst the city has seen in 70 years, claiming at least 156 lives, including at least one child, a firefighter, one Filipina, and nine Indonesians. 

Only one of the eight towers was spared, and the toll is sure to rise as officers comb through 31 stories of each of the seven blackened, eerily silent towers that stand tall up in the sky as the MTR train shrieks to a halt at Tai Po Market station.

Wang Fuk Court is about a 15-minute walk from the MTR East Rail Line station, through a bridge over a Tai Po River tributary where rickety fisherfolk boats undulate in the calm, brown waters.

Geralyn, who asked that her full name not be used, was both overwhelmed and teary-eyed, grateful for the helping hand from an emergency help desk jointly run by the Mission for Migrant Workers with three allied groups.

Seated near her was Puji-Astutik, who told Rappler it was her first time back in the area — her home away from home for the past six years — four days since an angry fire burst and tore through the estate, destroying lives, properties, and the Hong Kong “can do” spirit in its wake. 

Geralyn and Puji-Astutik were among those who escaped just in the nick of time — alive but deeply shocked from the towering inferno that engulfed, within three hours, the Tai Po Home Ownership Scheme estate on November 26.

The Filipina and the Indonesian did not know each other — until that Sunday under the tree seating area, but both shared common memories and moments, comparing notes and pointing out which buildings they had lived in on a diagrammatic sketch of the Wang Fuk Court towers that Geralyn had captured on her phone.

Twists of fate

Laughing and sobbing, they were grateful to have survived the catastrophic fire, telling Rappler what happened, the twists of fate that helped them escape, each saving two popos (grandmothers) and one toddler at two separate buildings — Wang Sun House and Wang Shing House in Wang Fuk Court — voicing their fears and worries for what the future holds.

They are among the 370,000 foreign domestic helpers in the special administrative region, toiling for families at a minimum allowable wage with no right of permanent residency or welfare benefits, subject to a two-week rule, and almost marginalized in a society that could not function without their “aunties.”

Geralyn, who left Isabela province in the Philippines for Hong Kong 18 months prior, said it was her employer, 67, who alerted her about an oncoming fire mid-afternoon of November 26.

The grandmother had left their flat for her usual afternoon walk downstairs while her toddler grandson was asleep, the boss and helper having no inkling of the oncoming disaster despite both hearing loud noises in a neighboring tower from their eighth-floor flat. 

The popo, she said, thought it was the usual traffic jam, as they usually hear ambulances blaring. Their flat was dark, and they couldn’t peer out the closed windows as they had been covered by styrofoam boards for more than a year while the complex was undergoing renovation works. Bamboo scaffolding and heavy green meshes wrapped each of the eight towers during the renovation.

No fire alarm sounded, Geralyn said. Several minutes later, “she (popo) came back at 3:20 pm and told me we should leave.”

Geralyn checked her mobile and found texts from her employers about a fire near their building (and that they should close the windows), but another text urged them to leave the flat.

Geralyn’s first thought was to scoop the toddler up and head for the lift after grabbing her phone.

The grandmother followed them, fetching the baby carrier first. 

Geralyn, a 43-year-old mother of one, had studied caregiving in the Philippines, and in hindsight, she was taught that during a fire, one should not go into a lift.

“It (lift) was still working at that time,” she said, but that thought of suffocating inside a lift from the smoke did not occur to her.

“The grandmother was panicking, saying ‘Go, go, go!'”

Geralyn said it was shocking that the fiery experience was up close and personal — in Hong Kong, of all places.

“We are avoiding some overseas countries because of war, something like that. But then this happened in Hong Kong,” she said, holding her tears back.

She had worked in Singapore and Moscow. She decided to go home “for good” to start a family, but thought of leaving for abroad again, knowing that she and her husband have to provide a bright future for their now 6-year-old daughter.

She had been avoiding the persistent calls from her husband during the height of the conflagration on November 26, not taking their calls as the household of three in Tai Po made their escape. She was afraid that if she talked to her family back home, she would be unable to stop crying, and her two loved ones would be more distressed.

Coping with the trauma, she said, was challenging, as her eyes welled up once more.

“I cope by being busy caring for the boy,” she said.

“But when he’s asleep, that’s when the dark thoughts creep in.”

Puji-Astutik, the 42-year-old Indonesian mother of one from Central Java who has worked in Hong Kong for a decade, is the sole carer of her popo, 80, who is also her employer and the owner of the 400 square-foot flat at Wang Shing House. The elderly’s daughter works in London, while her son lives in Yuen Long.

The Indonesian cried, thumping her chest, as she tried to find the words for their harrowing fight for survival.

She was going to the market while her elderly boss was having her usual afternoon nap.

But when she got to the lobby of Wang Shing, she saw fire consuming the building next to theirs.

“When I saw the fire and the smoke, I remembered my employer was sleeping. So, I had to save her,” she said and ran toward the lift to their 25th-floor flat.

Like Geralyn, Puji-Astutik also said the fire alarm did not sound off.

“That’s why if I am not coming down, if I don’t go to market, then I don’t know (there was a fire),” she said in English.

When she reached the flat, her popo was still fast asleep inside her locked bedroom.

“It took me 10 to 15 minutes banging on the door before she woke up.”

She said she went to save her employer because “I thought the fire would go to our building. But we are on the 25th floor, my popo cannot walk faster. I think I have to bring her down quickly. It is very difficult for me to carry her (down the stairs).”

Luckily for the two and the other passengers on the lift, it was still working.

When they reached the ground floor, the blaze was already spreading in their tower. She described it as a “very big fire” and “black smoke” that if she inhaled, she could hardly breathe.

Edwina Antonio, the executive director of the Bethune House migrant women’s refuge, said one helper had been sleepless after saving her young ward, holding on to the child as they both climbed down the staircase to escape the conflagration. The child’s parents were both at work..

She has four children back home, Antonio said, and it hit the helper that if she had died saving her ward and herself, what would happen to her four young children?

“Mentally, she’s affected. She can’t sleep, she can’t eat,” Antonio said. 

Another related that she was unable to save her employer’s cat and turtle, which she and her employer had left in the flat as they ran for their lives.

The pets were rescued by firefighters.

“While she was telling this story, she was crying so hard,” Antonio said.

On Monday, December 1, Hong Kong rescue officers discovered more bodies in their latest search, with some bodies found to be “incomplete or even burned to ashes.” – Rappler.com

Mary Ann Benitez is a multi-award-winning health journalist who has also covered ethnic minorities and socioeconomic issues. She is based in Hong Kong.