months not only was accommodation for 36,000 persons provided in this manner, but sketch plans had been produced for eight six-storey resettlement buildings which were also to be erected at Shek Kip Mei.
12. On the 22nd July, 1954, another serious fire occurred, this time at Tai Hang Tung north of the Boundary Street Sports Ground. Once more the streets were full of fire victims and once more immediate action was taken to level the fire site for re-development. By now sketch plans and working drawings for the multi-storey buildings at Shek Kip Mei were ready, and it was therefore decided that as many buildings of this type as possible should also be erected on the Tai Hang Tung fire site, which was fortunately an almost level valley floor.
13. As a result of the decision to spend public funds on multi-storey resettlement buildings, and also as a result of the fact that it had been found possible to build accommodation on the Tai Hang Tung fire site for about 6,000 more persons than the number of fire victims, a planned programme for the clearance of squatter areas became a practical proposition for the first time. The spare accommodation at Tai Hang Tung was used to initiate the clearance of two important sites -one of seven acres south of the Tai Hang Tung fire site (for an extension to that resettlement estate), the other of fourteen acres for a new big estate at Li Cheng Uk-all these estates being in the north- western part of Kowloon. The development of the twelve cottage areas in existence when the Department started was also accelerated and work was begun on the development of two new cottage areas, one at Tai Wo Ping in the hills north of Shek Kip Mei, and one at Tai Wo Hau, near Tsuen Wan, in the New Territories.
14. It was not until the middle of 1955 that squatter clearances had succeeded in reducing the sizes of the more combustible squatter areas to such an extent that the Department was able to concentrate on the first and most important of its functions-the freeing of land for the various forms of permanent development required by a rapidly expand- ing community: in particular schools, housing, factories, and public works projects for new roads, drains and water supply systems.
15. Land cannot however be freed of large numbers of squatters until alternative domestic accommodation can be provided and by the 1st April, 1956, it had been conclusively proved that the construction of multi-storey resettlement estates was the only practical method of providing this accommodation on the scale needed. It was also by then clear that the very large number of sites required for the Colony's
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