The Fire Services Department said on Sunday that it has carried out inspections at 36 commercial buildings which are deemed high risk over the past two weekends in a bid to enhance fire safety in the city.

Lai Kin-mo, Senior Divisional Officer of Building Improvement Strategy and Special Operations, said plain-clothes officers identified 259 violations of fire safety rules, among which 60 percent involved obstruction of fire escape routes.

“We found the plain-clothes inspections to quite effective, so we will continue to conduct these surprise inspections in plain-clothes at irregular intervals,” he said.

“Also, we will pay attention to the effectiveness of each inspection and violations identified at different locations. We will step up inspections at these buildings and we hope to gradually reduce fire risk.”

Meanwhile, the FSD said the four district public safety teams established in March last year inspected over 1,300 buildings in 2025.

Fung King-nam, Deputy Divisional Commander of Kowloon West and Public Safety, said officers could collect data on buildings’ fire safety management through active inspections.

"We will use big data analysis to integrate a risk map, facilitating us to implement targeted measures, such as allocate our resources on high-risk buildings for follow-up inspections,” he said.

“Also, we can deploy our resources to monitor the condition of certain buildings. Furthermore, after we identify high-risk buildings, we will step up promotion there to enhance residents' fire safety awareness."