Close to 1,000 evacuated after No. 3 alarm fire hits Shek Kwu Chau waste incineration facility

Close to 1,000 people have been evacuated from a waste incineration plant off Hong Kong’s Shek Kwu Chau island after a No. 3 alarm fire broke out at the facility on Monday.

The Fire Services Department said it received reports at 12.42pm on Monday that a fire had broken out at the I·PARK1 waste management facility on an artificial island off Shek Kwu Chau, south of Lantau Island. The blaze was upgraded to a No.3 alarm at 1.24pm.

“The fire was surrounded at 3.47pm, put under control at 4.18pm and largely put out at 4.45pm,” authorities said in a statement.

Police told HKFP that, as of 3pm, more than 900 people had self-evacuated from the island by boat. One person reported feeling unwell and was sent to Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital for treatment.

Images circulating online showed black smoke billowing above the site, while an unverified video appeared to show flames inside the facility. A Threads user who shared the clip suggested the waste had caught fire before reaching the incinerator.

I·PARK1 is Hong Kong’s first waste-to-energy facility. Its three incineration modules are designed to burn up to 3,000 tonnes of waste daily, according to the Environmental Protection Department. The project is part of the city’s broader effort to reduce its reliance on landfills.

The first module began trial operations in December 2025 with a daily processing capacity of 1,000 tonnes.

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Hans Tse is a reporter at Hong Kong Free Press with an interest in local politics, academia, and media transformation. He was previously a social science researcher, with writing published in the Social Movement Studies and Social Transformation of Chinese Societies journals. He holds an M.Phil in communication from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Before joining HKFP, he also worked as a freelance reporter for Initium between 2019 and 2021, where he covered the height - and aftermath - of the 2019 protests, as well as the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020.