About 970 evacuate as fire halts waste intake at Hong Kong’s I·PARK1

About 970 construction workers and operational staff evacuated Hong Kong’s offshore I·PARK1 waste-to-energy plant on October 26, 2026—a large-scale movement to safety that left one staff member needing hospital care and the facility unable to receive waste. Firefighters brought the blaze under control that afternoon, but the plant’s path back to operation remained unsettled. ^{6 19}

The fire was largely extinguished by 4:45 p.m. Hong Kong time, just over four hours after the first recorded outbreak. The immediate firefighting emergency had subsided; the consequences for the plant had not. Waste reception was suspended, the contractor stopped all major systems, and officials began assessing damage and arranging repairs. No reopening date was announced in the October 26 updates. ^{12 19}

I·PARK1, formally the Integrated Waste Management Facilities Phase I, occupies an artificial island off Shek Kwu Chau. The Environmental Protection Department located the fire on the roof above the third incineration module. That identifies where it burned, not what caused it: investigators had yet to establish the ignition source, and a reported bang had not been officially confirmed as an explosion. ^{1 19 11}

The evening government follow-up put the evacuation at about 970 people, including construction workers and operational staff, and described their departure as orderly. That supersedes the approximately 930 people recorded in an earlier fire bulletin. The two figures are successive counts of people reaching safety, not competing estimates of how many were hurt. ^{6 1}

One staff member felt unwell and was taken to Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital. No deaths were reported in the available accounts, although the official updates did not provide a final, explicit zero-death or zero-injury declaration. The South China Morning Post’s October 26 headline described one person as injured; the government’s more specific wording was that a staff member felt unwell and was sent to hospital. That is the description supported by the official account, rather than a confirmed traumatic injury. ^{12 4 11}

The response reached a No. 3 alarm, the third of Hong Kong’s five fire-alarm levels. The first bulletin recorded the outbreak at 12:43 p.m.; the evening follow-up used approximately 12:40 p.m. The latter is a less precise description of the onset, not evidence of a separate incident. ^{2 6}

The Environmental Protection Department said it would extend operating hours at the West New Territories Landfill Extension while I·PARK1’s waste reception was suspended. It also said overall waste-treatment operations remained normal. That is a statement about the wider waste system’s ability to keep functioning—not a claim that the fire-struck plant was operating normally. ¹⁹

The longer landfill hours provide a contingency measure, but the available reporting does not trace every load that would otherwise have gone to I·PARK1. No diversion tonnage was established. Nor was there a measured figure for lost electricity generation or waste-treatment output. Those gaps matter because the plant’s headline specifications are not a substitute for its operating records. ^{19 20 22}

I·PARK1 was designed to treat 3,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste a day. A February 1, 2026 Hong Kong Commercial Daily report projected electricity exports of about 480 million kilowatt-hours a year at full operation. These figures explain the facility’s intended importance, but neither says how much waste it was burning or electricity it was exporting when the fire began. Multiplying design capacity by shutdown days would not establish the actual loss. ^{20 22}

Its commissioning history adds another reason for caution. Earlier reporting placed the first module’s trial-operation start on December 22, 2025. The other two modules were expected to begin testing progressively from the first quarter of 2026, with all three anticipated to operate during 2026. Those were milestones and expectations, not confirmation that every module had reached full commercial operation by October 26. The incident updates did not settle the plant’s precise operating level that day. ^{10 22}

The Environmental Protection Department and Fire Services Department were to investigate, and the contractor was required to submit a report within seven days. Alongside the cause, the unresolved questions included the extent of damage and the conditions for safely restarting plant systems and accepting waste again. Officials were pressing ahead with repair arrangements, but had not announced when those steps would permit a restart. ¹⁹

By the evening of October 26, the supported picture was an interrupted waste-to-energy plant, a largely extinguished fire, one reported hospitalisation and contingency waste-handling arrangements. It was neither an uncontrolled blaze nor a confirmed return to normal plant operations. The cause and the restart decision remained open. ^{6 19}