Firefighters on Wednesday afternoon recovered the body of a worker trapped under a crane that collapsed hours earlier in Sau Mau Ping, raising the number of dead in the disaster to three.

Six others were injured.

The crane came down on top of several containers that served as makeshift offices at a Housing Society construction site on Anderson Road shortly before 11am.

"The injured person is trapped under the base of the collapsed crane. The 65-tonne crane is rather heavy and we need different tools and to conduct risk assessment to rescue the trapped worker," said Yim Ying-kit, acting assistant division officer from the Fire Services Department, as rescue work was being carried out.

The worker was freed shortly after 6pm and was later declared dead.

Two workers died earlier, one at the scene and the other in hospital.

According to the Association for the Rights of Industrial Accident Victims, the victims were an engineer, an engineer assistant and an electrician. They were aged between 22 and 41.

Of the six injured, two were in serious condition in hospital and four suffered minor injuries. Firefighters, who arrived at the scene with rescue dogs and drones, freed several of the workers from the containers struck by the crane.

The crane was operating when the accident happened but it was not lifting anything and the cause of the accident was unknown, officers said.

Chief Executive John Lee said he was concerned about the accident. He extended his condolences to the families of the deceased and wished the injured a speedy recovery.

In a social media post, Lee said the Labour Department would conduct a comprehensive investigation into the incident, and had already started inspections at other construction sites across the territory that have cranes, to ensure they comply with safety requirements.

Secretary for Labour and Welfare Chris Sun said he suspected the base of the crane was "problematic", and that the use of similar cranes at the site will be suspended.

"We're going to issue a suspension order to stop the work of the three tower cranes in this construction site. The order will be in force until proof is given to the Labour Department that they are safe to operate once again, so there's no time limit to the suspension order," he said.

The Housing Society said it will provide a lump sum of HK$300,000 to the family of each deceased worker, while the family of each injured worker will be offered HK$100,000.

It added it is following up on the case with the main contractor.

Siu Sin-man, chief executive of the Association for the Rights of Industrial Accident Victims, said the number of industrial accidents in Hong Kong has been on the rise and the government should be more transparent regarding probes into the incidents.

"The government does not attach great importance to every single industrial accident, it is only concerned about certain ones. It also does not make its investigative reports public. Therefore, we do not know exactly how the accidents have occurred. So how can industry take note of what has happened and how can society monitor such accidents?" Siu questioned.

"In future, we would like the government to make its investigative reports public so that they can be referenced by industry and monitored by society. This will reduce similar accidents."
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Last updated: 2022-09-07 HKT 18:46