4th Alarm Fire in Central

This large 4th-alarm fire in the Central business district of Hong Kong totally destroyed the old China Building in Pedder Street.

The building was covered with bamboo scaffolding and thick plastic sheeting because it was being demolished at the time. This made the firefighting much more difficult as the water jets were hampered by the plastic barrier until the flames burned through.

The fire was classed as a Fourth Alarm because there was were persons trapped. They were located and led to safety from the roof.

On the street below, Queens Road Central, I could not resist grabbing this photo of the local Hong Kong press corps hard at work. The flared jeans and long hair date the photo as the early 1970s - just before I got married to a wonderful Sydney girl I met in HK. So I emigrated to Australia with her and had two gorgeous children.
 

The Hong Kong fire brigade when I knew it was highly professional, and I am sure it still is today. In a densely-packed high-rise city like Hong Kong, it really had to be. I couldn't swear to it, but Hongkong probably is the most densely-populated city in the world. It's about 7 million people nowadays, all packed into a tiny area.

The HK Fire Training School was run by expatriate British officers, who had experience learned their craft in UK fire brigades or in the armed services - sometimes they had served and held rank in both.

This resulted in a highly-trained and highly-disciplined brigade of professional fire fighters.
At a significent-sized fire in Hong Kong it was not uncommon to have more than 200 firemen on the scene, together with dozens of fire appliances. I reported a lot of large fires while I was there; for newspapers at first but later for radio.

I have never seen a city fire of those kinds of proportions in Sydney Australia, thank God. Perhaps it's due to the much tougher fire safety regulations we have in this country. But also, it is 30 years later as well, and we have better safety systems, including cheap smoke alarms that are readily available.