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FIRE

‘Psychotic’ patients left with no running water

Patients in a psychiatric clinic in Lund have been without running water for two days after a nearby fire cut off their supply, leaving many mentally ill patients unable to shower or flush the toilet.

'Psychotic' patients left with no running water

“This is disastrous,” said nurse Corinna Jarfjord to Sydsvenskan newspaper.

“Many of these patients are psychotic, and don’t understand why the water’s not running.”

105 patients are cared for at the Sankt Lars clinic in Lund, southern Sweden, however this task has been no easy feat for the staff over the past two days.

The staff members have been forced to fetch water from a tank nearby so that the patients are able to use the facilities, and no extra nurses have been deployed to help.

According to the paper, the cause of the problem was a fire in a nearby school, where old pipes in the area burst from the increased pressure during the extinguishing of the fire.

Meanwhile, Jarfjord is furious and claims that the water supply should have been fixed a long time ago.

“If this was a major hospital, I am certain it would have been fixed within the hour,” she told the paper.

Nurses are concerned that the lack of water poses other problems too, as some of the patients have been known to set fires in their rooms. While Jarfjord acknowledges the clinic’s fire extinguishers should suffice, she claims it’s impossible to predict the possible damages if a fire begins.

Jarfjord is now threatening to close down the ward sections of the clinic if the pipes are not fixed on Wednesday, as has been promised.

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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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