SHARE
COPY LINK

FIRE

Arson suspected in hotel inferno

Police suspect that a fire which raged through a hotel in Eskilstuna in central Sweden early Wednesday morning was deliberately set.

Arson suspected in hotel inferno

“We’ve launched a preliminary investigation into suspicions of arson. Several details suggest that the fire was started deliberately, but we don’t want to say more than that,” said Sörmland police spokesperson Lars Franzell to the TT news agency.

The head of emergency services in Eskilstuna, Owe Thörn, told TT that three people were taken to hospital with mild smoke-related injuries.

By 6.30am all guests staying at the Quality Hotel Statt had been evacuated.

“All 113 guests have been brought to safety and we’ve checked them against the hotel’s guest registry,” said Thörn, who described the mood as calm, adding that no one appeared to be suffering from shock following the incident.

Nevertheless, the town has set up a support group to care for those affected by the blaze.

The fire broke out in the hotel’s basement restaurant around 4am.

According to Thörn, the fire then spread throughout the oldest section of the building, a three-storey structure with an annex on top facing Hamngatan.

Soon most of hotel was engulfed in flames and firefighters from several nearby departments were called to assist with the evacuation before turning their attention to extinguishing inferno.

By 8.30am, the fire was under control.

“Now all that remains is the final extinguishing of the fire, which will take the entire day,” said Thörn.

He estimated that about half of one of the hotel’s two buildings was completely destroyed.

FIRE

Barcelona fire kills four, including two children

A fire ripped through an abandoned bank occupied by squatters in central Barcelona on Tuesday, killing four people, including a baby and a three year-old boy, Spanish firefighters said.

Police and firefighters gather outside an abandoned building where a blaze broke out early on November 30, 2021 in Barcelona, killing four people.
Police and firefighters gather outside an abandoned building where a blaze broke out early on November 30, 2021 in Barcelona, killing four people. (Photo by Pau BARRENA / AFP)

“While we were battling the fire, we found four people. Emergency services tried to revive them but unfortunately they failed, they could not do anything to save them,” the head of the firefighting operation, Ángel López, told reporters.

Firefighters rescued four other people who were inside the building while putting out the blaze, he added.

Those four were treated for smoke inhalation.

Firefighters rushed to the scene at around 6 am after being warned that a blaze had broken out in the building, Mr Lopez said.

While Mr López said it was not clear how the four dead people were related, Barcelona-based daily newspaper La Vanguardia said they were all members of a Romanian family.

A spokesman for Catalonia’s regional police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, said an investigation had been opened into the causes of the fire.

In December 2020, four people were killed after a blaze ripped through an industrial complex occupied by squatters, many of them African migrants, near Barcelona.

Over 100 squatters were believed to be living in precarious conditions at the abandoned complex in Badalona, a suburban town north of the city.

In addition to the four deaths, more than 20 people were injured in the blaze.

SHOW COMMENTS