A vigil was held online on Sunday to honour the firefighters who lost their lives while battling the Ngau Tau Kok fire
Eason Chan Yick-shun uploaded a photo and wrote “Salute to Our Firefighters” on Facebook.An online vigil organised by a group of artists and nine TV and radio broadcasting companies was held on Sunday to pay tribute to two firefighters who lost their lives while battling the Ngau Tau Kok blaze last week, and honour the other frontline firefighters.
The Hong Kong Performing Artistes Guild (HKPAG) called for people to upload a photo of themselves to Facebook holding a torchlight and a sign that read “Salute to Our Firefighters” with the hashtag #salutetoourfirefighters.
A Taiwanese song called The Sincere Hero has been rewritten and renamed The True Hero to honour the firefighters. The music video for The True Hero, consisting of the photos uploaded by Hongkongers and artists, will be broadcast at 7pm tonight by all nine stations, including TVB, TVB Network Vision, ViuTV, Metro Broadcast Corporation, Phoenix Television, Commercial Radio, RTHK, NOW TV and Cable Television.
A sneak peek of The True Hero:
YP Junior Reporter Joy Pamnani, 17, said that social media was a more convenient platform for people to pay their respects to the firefighters.
“Using social media means the organisers can put their efforts into honouring the firefighters and ensuring the message is being spread,” said Pamnani.
However, Hong Kong Baptist University student Jessie Pang, 19, said the online campaign was a case of too little too late.
“If the HKPAG wanted to boost firefighters’ morale and highlight the danger they were in, they should have launched the campaign earlier while firefighters were battling the blaze,” she said.
Pang said the celebrities were taking advantage of the Ngau Tau Kok fire and using it as publicity stunt to promote themselves.
The blaze was put out on Saturday night, 108 hours after it broke out at a storage facility in Ngau Tau Kok.