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Governor, you mentioned that there was a bill introduced into this Council sometime in May, which if it had taken effect could well have prevented to a certain extent such incidents as happened yesterday. I do hope that, Governor, you are not implying that had this bill been passed by this Council earlier this would not have happened. Because I am sure you would understand that there is a certain machinery in this Council on scrutinising bills and that every bill introduced into this Council is as important as any other one and that members of this Council have been working very diligently to achieve that certain direction. And I have to say this simply because I do represent the House.
Governor: Can I remind the honourable gentleman what I said because I went out of my way to avoid, I hope, sounding as though I was putting any criticism on the Council for quite properly considering this measure thoroughly. I said:
"The Fire Safety Commercial Premises Bill was put to this Council on 29 May this year. When this legislation is in place it will allow our Fire Services to take action to improve fire-safety" etc, etc.
And I said earlier that the Council had been quite properly considering the bill thoroughly. Let me also remind the honourable gentleman what I said in response to his honourable friend.
"I think we have to strike a nice balance between before something happens thinking we have got all the time in the world and after it happens thinking we must rush at it."
This is not a moment when any of us should be criticising one another on these matters but we have got to work together to get a decent properly considered set of regulations in place.
Mr Albert Chan (in Chinese): Mr President, Mr Governor, on this tragic incident I'm sure all members are very concerned about it and on the part of the fire services and others involved in the rescue, we do pay tribute to their bravery.
Now on the fire fighting itself, I think members of the public and the media saw something from TV reports and they inevitably would ask some questions. Now I have no intention to query the way the fire services handled the incident, but we are in a very crowded city and we are talking (about) a major catastrophe. Now do they have enough equipment, are they properly equipped? I have some doubts. I'm not querying them but I have some doubts. I could see there were many people waiting to be rescued next to windows. They had to wait a long time before they were rescued and also we saw only a small number of hydraulic platforms put in action. And also for a long time we could see there was fire spreading and we could see the flames burning and it was a long time before we saw hoses being directed at them.
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