HMM: Hong Kong Contractors Used Unsafe Netting at Fire Site, Officials Say.

Hong Kong officials said on Monday that contractors at the ill-fated housing estate where a fire killed more than 150 people had blanketed buildings with substandard scaffolding netting, and then tried to conceal the unsafe material.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption said that after a summer typhoon, some of the scaffolding netting used at the Wang Fuk Court housing estate in northern Hong Kong was replaced with cheaper material that did not meet fire-safety standards.

To fool inspectors, netting that met the standards was installed at the base of the scaffolding, where samples are usually taken.

The findings emerged as the death toll from Wednesday’s blaze rose to 151, with the police still combing the towers for bodies and evidence of identification. More than 40 people were still missing. The work of locating and identifying remains would take another three weeks, officials said.

For what it’s worth, I had GPT perform a deep search for similarly deadly corruption before the CCP clamped down on Hong Kong, and it came up with nothing.