Hong Kong’s security chief has pledged to replace fax messaging between police and firefighters with a digital system and to increase phone lines at emergency call centres, after an inquiry into last year’s deadly Tai Po fire heard that callers waited up to 15 minutes to be transferred.
Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung’s remarks on Friday at a Legislative Council Finance Committee meeting followed the independent panel investigating last November’s blaze hearing evidence of a bottleneck between the force’s 999 call centre and Fire Services Department operators.
The inquiry into the Wang Fuk Court blaze, which broke out on November 26 last year and claimed 168 lives, was told that while the police force’s emergency centre had 200 telephone lines, the department’s had only 30.
In one case, a domestic helper caring for a 98-year-old resident was kept waiting for 90 seconds for a transfer, before having to repeat her location and details to a second operator.
Another issue raised at the hearing was the practice of police faxing additional information from emergency appeals gathered online to the fire department.
“Nowadays, nobody really uses fax machines any more,” lawmaker Chan Hok-fung said as he asked Tang at the Legco meeting how authorities planned to improve their outdated interdepartmental communications system.
