HONG KONG — As smoke quickly filled the corridors of a 31-story tower in Hong Kong last week, Rhodora Alcaraz found herself trapped alone with a 3-month-old baby.

The 28-year-old migrant worker had arrived in the Chinese territory from the Philippines only a day earlier to work for a family living in a high-rise housing estate. When a massive fire ignited in the middle of the afternoon, tearing across seven of the estate’s eight buildings , Alcaraz shielded the baby in her arms and was rescued by firefighters just in time, along with her employer’s elderly mother.

Hong Kong, an international financial hub of 7.5 million people, is home to hundreds of thousands of domestic helpers like Alcaraz, mostly women from low-income Asian countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia.

The br

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