Hong Kong to scrap fax messaging between police and fire services for emergencies

Security chief pledges digital overhaul after fatal fire inquiry exposes critical 15-minute delay in emergency response. | Contesto: cronaca

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• Hong Kong to scrap fax messaging between police and fire services for emergencies

Contesto

Hong Kong’s Security Secretary, Chris Tang Ping-keung, announced on Friday that the government will scrap the decades-old practice of using fax machines to relay emergency messages between police and fire services. The pledge, made during a Legislative Council Finance Committee meeting, comes directly in response to a damning independent inquiry into a fatal fire in Tai Po, which uncovered that residents faced waits of up to 15 minutes for emergency call referrals due to systemic communication failures. The inquiry revealed a critical bottleneck in the city's emergency response infrastructure. When 999 calls reporting the Tai Po fire were received, operators were forced to manually relay information via fax to the Fire Services Department, a process that caused unacceptable delays. This antiquated system, a relic from a pre-digital era, directly contributed to a lag in dispatching firefighters to the scene, with tragic consequences. The hearing evidence presented a stark picture of a life-saving protocol crippled by outdated technology. Secretary Tang’s announcement outlines a two-pronged modernization plan. The core commitment is to replace the fax-based messaging system with a fully digital, integrated platform to ensure instantaneous data sharing between the police and fire departments. Concurrently, the government will increase the number of phone lines at emergency call centers to prevent congestion and reduce the risk of citizens being unable to get through during a crisis. These measures are framed as urgent corrections to flaws laid bare by the recent tragedy. The persistence of fax machines for critical inter-departmental communication highlights a significant, and previously overlooked, vulnerability in Hong Kong's otherwise modern emergency services. While frontline responders are equipped with advanced tools, the administrative backbone coordinating them had remained stuck in the past. This discrepancy points to a potential pattern of underinvestment in the unseen 'plumbing' of emergency systems, where procedural inertia can have deadly real-world outcomes. The planned overhaul raises immediate questions about implementation timelines, the specific...

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Categoria: cronaca