Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

FIRE

Fire ravages Mölndal apartment building

One person has been taken to hospital with smoke injures and an entire block evacuated in the wake of a devastating fire in Mölndal in western Sweden.

Published: 2 March 2009 08:43 CET
Fire ravages Mölndal apartment building

The fire started in an apartment building in Mölndal outside of Gothenburg early Monday morning.

Neither police nor emergency services could say what caused the fire, although the head of the tenant-owners’ association told the TT news agency that the fire started when someone threw a mattress on a balcony after an electric heating pad began to overheat.

“The mattress smoldered for several hours on the balcony and then caught fire. The fire spread up the eaves and into the attic. It was there about 30 metres were burned away,” said the head of the association, adding that he estimated the damage would come to tens of millions of kronor.

Lars Ango from the Västra Götaland police said the entire block was evacuated.

“We’re talking about lots and lots of people,” he told TT.

Emergency services received a call about the fire around 3.45am.

More than 40 firefighters from four different departments were called to fight the flames, emergency services reported.

By 8am, the fire had more or less been extinguished.

“Now all that remains is the final work of putting out the fire,” said emergency service operator Urban Samuelsson to TT.

Some of the hundreds of people evacuated may be able to return home later in the morning.

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.

Published: 30 November 2021 10:41 CET
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