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Ng Kang-chung

More than 600 officers from the Hong Kong police force’s Disaster Victim Identification Unit (DVIU) searched two fire-ravaged blocks of the Wang Fuk Court residential complex in Tai Po without finding any more bodies on Saturday.
The death toll from the blaze remains at 128, but 150 people are still unaccounted for.
Dressed in white full-body protective gear, the DVIU officers went through Wang Yan House and Wang Tao House and collected evidence to confirm the identities of victims. No bodies were found, although several pets were rescued.
For some of the officers, the operation was just the latest in a series of far-too-close encounters with tragedy in recent years. It also again brought the DVIU into the public spotlight.
The team, which has about 640 officers, was set up in 1975 after two deadly landslides in 1972. The Sau Mau Ping landslide in Kwun Tong claimed 71 lives while one on Po Shan Road in Mid-Levels resulted in 67 fatalities.


The incidents made the government realise the need for police to have a professional team to deal with disasters involving a large number of casualties to ensure remains can be identified quickly, accurately and humanely, and to provide evidence for investigations.
Hong Kong police were one of the earliest law enforcement agencies in Asia to set up such a specialised team focusing on forensic work.
The grim work of the DVIU, though mostly only in the public consciousness after a tragedy, is familiar to all of the force’s crime detectives and is part of their training.
On passing the training, they automatically become a DVIU member and serve on it for a year.
The unit’s core leadership comprises superintendents, chief inspectors and senior inspectors from the force’s Detective Training Centre.
At the scene of a disaster, members are usually divided into groups of four to search an area of about five metres by five metres each time. If a body is found, officers use an RFID system to record the location. The body will then be transported to a mortuary for final confirmation by family members.
They have been deployed in such disasters as the Garley Building fire in 1996, which claimed 41 lives, the Lamma ferry collision in 2012, where 39 people died, and the Tai Po bus crash in 2018, which left 19 dead.

Team members were also sent to Thailand during the 2004 tsunami to help identify the remains of 38 Hong Kong travellers. They were also deployed in 2013 to Egypt to assist in identifying the victims of a fatal hot air balloon crash that killed 19 people including nine Hong Kong residents.
Identifying bodies can be difficult, especially in mass casualty disasters or when remains are severely damaged. In cases where the body is too disfigured to identify, officers use fingerprints, dental records or DNA samples to get a match.
“Our job is to retrieve the names of every lost life and allow family members to say a proper goodbye,” then DVIU commander Yau Nai-keung said in a 2018 interview.
Yau spoke of their work in the aftermath of the 2018 Tai Po bus crash.
“Though we found property and ID cards near the bodies, we could not even recognise the victims by the photos on the cards,” Yau said.
“Many bodies were broken and incomplete because the impact was too enormous.”
In the same interview, DVIU trainer Chief Inspector Wong Shu-bong recalled the 2012 Lamma ferry disaster.
“The most unforgettable scenario is seeing children’s corpses. I also have children. It gave me a very strong feeling,” he said. “They had soaked in the water for a while, which made the body swollen. It added difficulties in identification.”
Wong also had a role during the 1996 Garley Building fire.
He said in the 2018 interview: “I helped DVIU members escort the corpses to the mortuary. I knew I was carrying a dead body, but visually you could not tell. It was so burnt. You could not see the face and clothing. You could not tell the sex.”
But trauma aside, a history of working on some of the city’s worst accidents left both Yau and Wong with a keen appreciation of the senselessness of tragedies.
Wong said: “The strongest impression from this job is that many disasters and serious incidents could be avoided. A random act of negligence can lead to an unwanted consequence.”




In a separate interview in 2018, Yau said: “Being reckless or careless can result in irreparable loss.”
The most common quote from team members: “I hope I never have to be deployed again in my life.”
A local forensics specialist was hopeful that the identities of charred victims in the latest tragedy could be determined through DNA technology.
Forensic anthropologist Winsome Lee Hin-shin said: “Bodies are burnt yet identification could still be done. Methods that are endorsed by Interpol include dental records, DNA and fingerprints.
“Under thermal damage, DNA from soft tissues may not be likely to be recovered.
“[But] bone DNA could be retrieved. For teeth that were not damaged or had not experienced any dental pathology before the incident, DNA is absolutely retrievable.”
Since 2014, Lee has worked on handling unclaimed or buried bones in places hit by wars or natural disasters, including East Timor, Poland, Cyprus and Somaliland.
A forensic anthropologist examines clues in human remains, such as bones and teeth, by which the age, height, sex and ancestry of the dead can be traced. What happened to the victims before their death can also be worked out.
Lee said the identification process could take some time, despite DNA retrievability.
“It is important to note that DNA requires cross-referencing and comparison. So it sometimes depends on the laboratory and the information provided by the families,” she added.
“Forensic anthropologists can work on helping narrow down the search parameters and help provide possible identities for further confirmation to get a positive ID.
“We can look at injuries or features that might be shown on the body, such as injuries the victim experienced when he was small and left the sign of a healed fracture on bones, implanted medical devices or any devices in a body that may match the individual’s medical record. These provide really good individualistic features for possible ID.”
Other identifiers such as birthmarks and tattoos would also be useful.
“The goal is to have an Interpol-recognised method to confirm the identity. But before that, using all sorts of things to provide probable ID will help speed up the identification process.”


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Hong Kong’s Tai Po fire tragedy

Hong Kong fire disaster brings victim ID unit’s grim task back into focus

DVIU squad members search for evidence at the scene of the Tai Po fire. Photo: Eugene Lee

Squad members were deployed on Saturday and searched two blocks on the estate. Photo: Eugene Lee

3 cats and turtle rescued from Hong Kong residential complex days after fire

A pet is rescued by a firefighter at Wang Fuk Court on Thursday. Photo: Eugene Lee

Animals are taken to safety on Thursday. Photo: Eugene Lee

Filipino helper among victims of Hong Kong fire – as it happened

People leave flowers as Hongkongers mourn the fire victims. Photo: Eugene Lee

Hong Kong begins 3 days of mourning as more arrests made over deadly blaze

National and Hong Kong flags will fly at half-mast for three days. Photo: Eugene Lee

Officials observe three minutes of silence. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Residents have been signing books of condolence. Photo: Elson Li

A park in  in Tai Po is a sea of flowers. Photo: Dickson Lee

Specialist police officers head into the disaster zone. Photo: Elson Li

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Officers from the police force’s Disaster Victim Identification Unit have been deployed at the scene of Tai Po blaze


Officers from the police force’s Disaster Victim Identification Unit have been deployed at the scene of Tai Po blaze.


Hong Kong fire disaster brings victim ID unit’s grim task back into focus

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Officers from the police force’s Disaster Victim Identification Unit have been deployed at the scene of Tai Po blaze

Officers from the police force’s Disaster Victim Identification Unit have been deployed at the scene of Tai Po blaze