By James Pomfret
HONG KONG, Dec 3 (Reuters) – It was a clear autumn afternoon with blue skies and a cool breeze as Wong set off to pick up his granddaughter from school.
The 71-year-old retiree and his wife took turns making the walk to school from their apartment complex in Hong Kong’s Tai Po district.
That Wednesday – the day a deadly fire devastated the Wang Fuk Court housing estate – it just happened to be Wong’s day to go.
Soon after he left their apartment, Wong, who asked to be identified only by his surname, realized a fire had broken out at one of the towers in the complex.
By the time he returned, leaving his granddaughter behind as he fled quickly, flames were pouring out of the middle floors of the tower where he and his wife lived.
“My wife is inside,” he screamed, pointing at the flames engulfing the apartment block.
A week after the tragedy, Wong’s wife is still unaccounted for and is among the 30 people listed missing. At least 156 people were killed.
Wong’s plight – arms raised in anguish and weeping as he stands against the backdrop of what became Hong Kong’s deadliest fire since 1948 – was captured in a Reuters photograph that went viral, becoming the emblematic frame of the disaster.
Reuters photographer Tyrone Siu said he saw Wong by the roadside gesturing with frantic grief when he arrived at the scene around an hour after the blaze started.
“It’s a picture that tells you everything straight away,” said Siu. “No matter where you are from in the world, you can feel what Mr. Wong is feeling, the helplessness and the pain.”
Wong’s son spoke to Reuters while police officers in hazmat suits and helmets combed the buildings for bodies. By Tuesday, there was still no update on his mother, Wong’s wife.
J Wong, who, like his father declined to give his full name, said he wanted to tell his family’s story as part of a process of healing.
Authorities have pointed to substandard plastic mesh and insulation foam used during renovation work at the complex for a blaze that quickly spread to seven high-rise towers, home to more than 4,000 people.
“On that first day, of course he couldn’t accept what happened,” Wong’s son told Reuters. When his father was looking at the fire, he “knew in his heart” from the condition of the building that his wife was lost.
At one point, Wong’s wife called Wong after the fire broke out and had a short conversation that lasted about a minute, their son said, declining to give details. “Soon after that chat, she disappeared.”
Wong said his father, who had worked as a foreman in building maintenance before retiring and was a certified electrician and plumber, had worried about the safety risks from the renovation on the building.
He had ripped out the styrofoam boards covering their windows and replaced them with fire retardant plastic film. He also regularly sprayed water onto the green mesh outside their flat to keep it moist, the son said.
“Despite knowing the risks, no matter what he did, he couldn’t change what happened,” said the son.
That afternoon, after the picture was taken, Wong senior stood watching the horror unfold, collapsing onto the pavement at one point. As night fell, a police officer brought him a blue plastic stool to sit on.
“I will come find you,” he muttered at one point, staring up towards his home and speaking to his wife.
(Reporting by James Pomfret, Nicoco Chan and Tyrone Siu; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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