The Yip family once imagined moving to a country house, all three generations under the same roof, with their own vegetable garden and away from Hong Kong’s dense high-rises. A devastating fire, Hong Kong’s worst since 1948, took that future from them, leaving behind little but rubble and blackened walls.

“Whatever we can retrieve is a bonus,” says Yip Shun-Ting Carbon, aged 36, who lost his mother, Pak Shui-lin, in the inferno in November last year that killed 168 people at a large residential complex under renovation.

Last week, Yip and his wife, older brother and father formed a small crew, wearing backpacks, hard hats and heavy-duty face masks, as they re-entered the wreckage of their family home at Wang Fuk Court for the first time.

“When I go to sleep every night, I imagine what the flat might now look like,” Yip says. “I see fragments of images of every window in flames, then I think about why this could have happened.”

The authorities issued each household a strict three-hour time slot to salvage what the could from their homes, and the clock starts on entry. Yip took a few minutes to gather himself amid his grief and anger before stepping into the chaos. But nothing prepared him for the sight at the open doorway where their front door used to be.

Everything was covered in soot. Some items had melted into piles of hardened plastic, unrecognisable. They were careful not to shake up more dust and metal particles, glimmering under their torches.

The family had devised a strategy to work under the time pressure. They divided up the sixth-floor flat by zone, with a mental map of where valuables and items of personal significance might be. First: the crystal bracelet and brooch his mother gave to his wife, Karen, as a gift.

Yip’s mother had stayed behind to knock on neighbours’ doors, saving the lives of four people. Her body was found back inside her flat, in another block of the same complex.

As they continued their search, a crystal block commemorating their pet dog, computers, diplomas and years-worth of collectible Gundam figurines were all thrown into bags and a few charred suitcases. The family stuffed decades of their life into grey cubicles at a mini storage.

“It’s a little bit of comfort, knowing we found everything we really cared about,” Yip says, as he and his wife wipe soot off of each other. It will take much longer to sift through possessions, so they’re taking it slowly.

The visit on Friday felt like a rehearsal, he says, as the family prepares to revisit their parents’ flat in the next block in just a few days, where the boys grew up and where their mother died.

‘I’ve lived here all my life’

Yip and his father are among the thousands displaced from their former homes in the north-eastern suburb of Tai Po.

Hong Kong is still reeling from the shock of the blaze, and is searching for answers to what could have caused a disaster comparable to the London’s Grenfell Tower fire, unimaginable in a financial hub known for its skyscrapers, safety and wealth.

Residents were led back into the buildings in small groups, flanked by a social worker and a police officer. The buildings are 31 storeys high, and only the stairs can be used. Elderly residents came with canes and walking frames. A man arrived in crutches and a cast on one foot.

Charities, moving companies and volunteers who had offered their help withdrew after officials announced restrictions on entry. At least one flat had been burgled in previous weeks, causing further trauma to residents already fretting about the few worldly possessions they may still have. The government-arranged flat visits will go on for two weeks.

Yip grew up in the neighbourhood after his parents first moved to Wang Fuk Court over two decades ago. It’s where he met Karen, when they both served as the district’s volunteer paramedics. After they married, they bought a flat in the same compound in 2021. His brother, his wife and their children settled in another housing estate a stone’s throw away.

His mother often helped with the grandchildren in the afternoon. For dinner Yip and his wife would head to the parents’ place just two elevator rides away, twice a week. Strolling along the estuary near home offered a sense of peace, and the easterly evening breeze coming in from the harbour was comforting, Yip recalls.

“I’ve lived here all my life,” Yip says. “It’s hard to find somewhere else that can replace where I’ve lived for 20, 30 years.”

After the fire Yip resigned from his job. “I’m not in a state of being able to simultaneously handle family and work,” he says. During the day he applies for aid programs and handles endless paperwork. He and his wife are staying in his brother’s flat about 2km away, and sleep in their niece’s single bed. Seven family members are crammed into the three-bedroom flat.

For the past month, Yip has commuted daily to the independent inquiry hearings into the fire. His father, Yip Ka-kui, now a vocal survivor, alleged in his testimony that authorities took no action on his series of complaints about problems with the buildings’ renovation works, until the fire engulfed them with his wife inside. He has vowed to seek justice for the remainder of his life.

Immediately after the fire authorities warned against “destabilising forces” that slandered relief efforts and “used disaster to stir up chaos”. They rejected calls for an ownership association meeting to decide the future of the complex, claiming some of the 400 signatures of property owners submitted on a petition may be fraudulent. Instead, authorities presented a plan to repurchase their homes, at rates that residents said are undervalued.

“I don’t dare to think what life in the next two or three years will look like,” Yip says. “Maybe the city will forget what happened, then the government won’t have to care about our voices and feelings any more.”