It was a close call for two female shoppers and a baby girl yesterday morning when an insulation panel fell from the ceiling of a Hong Kong wet market and narrowly missed them.
CCTV footage of the incident — which took place inside the Shek Wu Hui market in Sheung Shui just before 11am yesterday — was posted to a public Facebook group for residents of the city’s northern district.
In the video, the two women can be seen buying fishballs and meatballs from a frozen food stall at the market, with a baby stroller placed behind them. Seconds later, a large panel falls from the ceiling and crashes to the ground, narrowly missing the two women.
Part of the panel actually clips the baby stroller and comes to a rest on it, prompting one of the women to try to extricate the pram as a bystander lifts the panel. The baby, luckily, appeared to emerge from the ordeal unscathed.
A spokesperson for the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) told to on.cc that the object was a thermal insulation panel, about a meter long.
They alerted the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department (EMSD), who cordoned off the area to carry out repair works, and also checked the market to see if any other panels were at risk of falling.
The FEHD spokesperson also told the outlet that there were no records of similar incidents. They did not say what the panel was made of, or how much it weighed, but there are many such products on the market, made from materials ranging from synthetic fiber-based wools to plaster-like compounds.
One of the stall’s female employees, surnamed Lau, told HK01 that the baby in the stroller was about 1 year old.
“The little girl didn’t even cry; she didn’t know what was going on, but the old lady who was pushing the stroller looked really scared,” she said.
Lau added that this was the first time she had seen an incident like this in the 10 years she’s worked at the wet market.
Neither the FEHD nor the EMSD responded to Coconuts HK‘s inquiries as of press time.
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