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FIRE

Fire engines delayed by giant flower pots

Three fire engines trying to get to a fire in central Gothenburg on Wednesday were delayed after large flower pots placed in the street proved to be immovable.

“We must be able to get where we need to go and not jeopardize citizens’ lives,” said Bengt Holm of the Gothenburg emergency services to local paper Göteborgsposten (GP).

The problem arose when the fire brigade was answering an alert of a chimney fire in a Gothenburg eatery on Wednesday afternoon.

The fire turned out to be easily put out, but in order to get there the fire engines were forced to ram a number of large flower pots placed in the street by the city’s public transport authority (Trafikkontoret).

According to the paper, the pots have been placed in their current location by the agency in order to prevent heavy traffic from entering the newly laid street, Kungsgatan.

“The pots are there to hold back traffic. The street has to settle before heavy traffic can be allowed to travel on it,” said Magnus Jäderberg of the agency to GP.

However, Jäderberg stressed that it is possible to move the pots.

“Four people should easily be able to drag them to the side,” he told the paper.

However, according to Jäderberg the agency does not mind that the pots have been destroyed.

“We don’t care that they are broken, we’ll just have to cough up the money,” he told GP.

According to Holm, they have previously agreed with the agency that movable pots would be fine but in this the pots were so unwieldy that three firefighters together were unable to move them, which is why they were forced to ram them with the engine.

“We will continue to pursue a dialogue with the transport authority and if we feel that it doesn’t work we will have the pots removed,” he said to GP.

The Local/rm

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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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