A Block of flats somewhere in South China has caught fire and a number of these living spaces are already fully ablaze! From what can be seen, around seven floors of flats sit on top of a row of shops which comprise the bottom structure of the building. This mixture of the ‘commercial’ and the ‘private’ is common throughout the world today. These people are speaking Cantonese and so this could be anywhere in Guangdong province, the New Territories or Hong Kong Island. Certainly, the language that can be heard is what I would call Hong Kong Cantonese.
When I lived in the built up area of the New Territories with the Chinese side of my family, we inhabited high-rise flats – much higher than these – and all possessed a reinforced metal front door with an extra layer of wire mesh across the front, whilst the windows were always covered with a metal barricade structure designed to prevent people, pets and objects from falling out and tumbling hundreds of feet to the ground below! This also prevented innocent people walking around below from being hit!
A problem has sometimes been caused by these barricades when people have been trapped in their flats by out of control fires and have not been able to get to the front door! This delay between a fire being reported, the Fire Brigade arriving and the victim(s) getting out can be lethal! As can be seen here, the local people took matters into their own hands and decided to act! This action prevented this young child from being trapped between the barricades and the fire and being burned to death!
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 