Robotic legs give Hong Kong fire survivors a lift back to their homes

More than four months after a deadly fire engulfed her apartment block in Hong Kong's northern Tai Po district, Fanny Mok is preparing to go back to retrieve what remains of her belongings.

Mok, 59, is borrowing robotic exoskeleton legs to help her climb to her 13th floor apartment, where she lived for the past 30 years until a blaze in late November torched the complex, killing 168 people and displacing more than 4,000 residents.

“My knees hurt, I don’t have enough strength, and I get short of breath,” said Mok, who is temporarily staying in a small hostel room which experiences electricity and water cuts.

She has been practising climbing stairs using the exoskeleton legs in an apartment building near Wang Fuk Court, where the inferno damaged seven high-rise towers in what was Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades.

Former residents will be allowed to return to their flats for the first time from April 20 to May 4, with each household given a three-hour window to collect belongings.

Mok is among dozens of fire victims who are borrowing the exoskeleton legs and taking training sessions to learn how to use them. 

“There’s a real need. If I were 30, I wouldn’t need it. But at 60, I genuinely do.”

Built in the 1980s, Wang Fuk Court was home to 4,600 people, with more than a third of residents aged over 65. Most of them are now living in temporary accommodation across the city.

Helped by an NGO called AidVengers Federation, former residents must pass a test before being allowed to operate the exoskeletons, which are made by Hypershell, a Shanghai‑based robotics company. The pass rate has been 70%, the NGO said.

The complex's apartment towers have 31 floors, making the climb difficult for many elderly former residents. Collecting all their personal items in just a few hours was also difficult, they said.

Betty Ho, 61, who lived on the 15th floor of one tower for 35 years, said she hoped to retrieve cash and family photo albums spanning her childhood and adulthood. 

“How can you take everything you’ve lived with for decades out in just three hours? It’s basically impossible. Letting go of things is really very difficult.”

-Joyce Zhou/Reuters