After the city’s worst fire disaster in decades took 168 lives last November, it goes without saying that fire safety is paramount in our crowded high-rise environment. But evidence shows it still needs saying. It is to be found in the report by the Fire Services Department on checks on 1,500 residential and mixed-use old buildings carried out over two months beginning in January. A fire services spokesman said the checks found that 53 buildings had fire alarms with safety violations and another 53 had defects in their hosepipe reel systems. Eighteen had defects in both. Officers also issued over 2,500 fire hazard abatement notices.

Those figures speak for themselves about the scale of high-rise fire risk in Hong Kong’s old buildings. The lessons of the blaze that engulfed seven of eight towers at Wang Fuk Court must be learned and compliance with safety standards effectively enforced.

So it is good that the inspection exercise is being extended for two years until April 2028 as officers continue to check high-risk old buildings or those undergoing renovation.

Subdividing flats into tiny living spaces can compound fire risks. A reminder of this is the death of a 69-year-old man on Thursday in a fire in a 13th-floor flat at Jordan that had been subdivided into nine living spaces. In this case the cause remains under investigation. But the tragedy rightly prompted Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho Wing-yin to underscore the need to eradicate substandard housing and the importance of the new Basic Housing Units Ordinance.

“Each resident had an average living space of just five square metres, presenting numerous fire safety hazards,” Ho said. Under the new ordinance, which requires subdivided flats to meet minimum standards, owners have until the end of next February to register their flats. Once registered, they get a 36-month grace period to make properties compliant. Ho said the authorities had recently received 11,800 subdivided flat applications.

The law setting minimum standards falls short of expectations that subdivided flats be outlawed for good. A ban is unrealistic at this stage given the size of the market. But compliance and enforcement of better standards should be positive for fire safety.