With dozens of people still unaccounted for, rescue teams in Hong Kong continued to search the ruins of eight buildings that went up in flames last week, killing at least 128 people in one of the city's deadliest blazes.

Workers in hazmat suits were seen carrying out what appeared to be several body bags on Sunday afternoon.

Meanwhile a steady stream of people placed bouquets of flowers at a makeshift memorial outside the blackened buildings.

Many bowed toward the scene of the fire and said short prayers, or left handwritten notes among the flowers.

"It’s heart breaking. As a Hongkonger, seeing people in the place where we live lose their families, lose everything in just one night… if you put yourself in their shoes, it’s unbearable," said civil servant, Jeffery Chan.

There has been an outpouring of support and sympathy, with thousands of city residents visiting the site of the fire to pay tribute to the dead and donate supplies to those who lost everything in the blaze, which started Wednesday and took until Friday to fully extinguish.

The eight buildings of the Wang Fuk Court complex in the suburb of Tai Po had all been clad in bamboo scaffolding draped with nylon netting for renovations, with windows covered by polystyrene panels, and authorities are now investigating whether fire codes were violated.

Hong Kong officials announced late on Saturday they had ordered the immediate suspension of work on 28 building projects undertaken by the same contractor, the Prestige Construction & Engineering Company, for safety audits.

The Prestige Construction & Engineering Company did not answer calls Sunday for comment.

Three men - the directors and an engineering consultant of a construction company - were arrested the day after the fire broke out on suspicion of manslaughter, and police said company leaders were suspected of gross negligence but they did not identify the firm by name.

The apartment complex of eight, 31-storey buildings in Tai Po, a suburb near Hong Kong’s border with mainland China, was built in the 1980s.

It had almost 2,000 apartments and more than 4,600 residents.

Many are now housed in short-term emergency shelters or city hotels, and authorities are working on longer-term solutions.

Preliminary investigations showed the fire started Wednesday afternoon on a lower-level scaffolding net of one of the buildings, and then spread rapidly inside as the foam panels caught fire and blew out windows, according to Chris Tang, Hong Kong's secretary for security.

Winds helped the flames jump from building to building and soon seven of the eight were engulfed. It took until Friday morning, some 40 hours later, for more than 2,000 firefighters to finally extinguish all the flames.

First responders found that some fire alarms in the complex, which housed many older people, did not sound when tested, according to Andy Yeung, the director of Hong Kong Fire Services, which is also part of the investigation.

Authorities said Saturday they need to identify 44 more bodies out of the 128 recovered. About 150 people remain unaccounted for.

The dead included seven Indonesian migrant workers, and several dozen are still unaccounted for, the Indonesian Foreign Ministry said.

One Filipino woman who was a domestic helper was also killed and 12 others remain unaccounted for, according to the Philippines Consulate General in Hong Kong.

AP video by Ayaka McGill