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FIRE

School torched following Swedish teens’ failed hand gel tests

Two teens playing with alcohol-based hand sanitizer inadvertently burned down a school in Södertälje, south of Stockholm.

“This is a case of youthful negligence,” Matti Paavo of the Södertälje police told the Expressen newspaper.

Back in August, the two boys, ages 15 and 16, decided to test the flammability of their newly purchased hand sanitizer by writing their names with the substance on windows and sections of the façade at the Hovsjö school.

They then set the script alight.

Believing the alcohol-based liquid l had burned out, the two youths then left the area.

But as it turned out, the flames continued to burn in a slow-burning and nearly invisible flame which eventually spread to the wooden panel trim on the building’s exterior.

From there, the fire then spread up the walls toward the roof, sparking a strong enough blaze that firefighters were called less than 10 minutes after the boys had initially sprayed hand sanitizer on the school.

And despite the best efforts of fire crews, the school was totally destroyed.

The two teenagers are now suspected of arson, although police don’t believe they purposefully burned down the school.

“It was a game. They have no other explanation other than that they wanted to test things out and see what happened,” Paavo told the newspaper.

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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.

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