}
Tau Kok, where it had at one time been hoped to rehouse a very substantial proportion of Kowloon's squatters, site formation costs were becoming very high indeed, and quite apart from this the unpopularity of the area, which was due to its remoteness, made it very unlikely that large numbers of squatters could be successfully resettled there. This was the position when over 50,000 persons lost their homes in a single night in the great Shek Kip Mei fire of 25th December, 1953. The resulting situation constituted a crisis of the first order. The Government at once put in hand, on the site of the fire, the construction of temporary emergency two-storey accommodation on a large scale. At the same time the Urban Council appointed an Emergency Sub-Committee on Resettlement; its terms of refer- ence included the elaboration of the emergency measures already agreed on for the rehousing of the fire victims, and the sub- committee was also invited to put forward proposals for the solution of the overall squatter problem. Thus matters stood at the beginning of 1954.
CHAPTER II
THE PROBLEM: APRIL, 1954
9. Chapter I ends with the formation of the Emergency Sub-Committee of the Urban Council. When that committee was formed it was probably expected by those associated with these unhappy developments that it would concern itself primarily with the immediate emergency created by the Shek Kip Mei fire, a sufficiently formidable task by any standards. In fact the committee made it clear from the outset that it intended to examine the problem in its entirety and to propose a com- prehensive long-term solution if one could be devised. It may now be said that none of the events of the year under review- and it was to be an eventful year, so far as resettlement was concerned-served to cast any doubt on the essential validity of their main conclusions. They stated a number of propositions which were logical but unpalatable, and it is greatly to their credit that they stated them quickly and plainly. By the end of the year these had all been accepted by Government.
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