Fire razes historic villages on Norway coast

Småværet, an old fishing village and trading post, is a piece of Norwegian coastal history, with a large number of listed wooden buildings. 

 

The area's 33 inhabitants were evacuated before their houses were consumed by the blaze and no one is so far believed to have been injured. 

 

At first firemen had little hope of saving any of the villages' buildings, but by early on Tuesday afternoon, the 60 firemen working at the site believed that the fire could be contained, saving 50 of the houses. At the same time, they hoped to prevent the fire spreading south to the village of Uran. 

 

"It seems as if we have reasonably good control," he said. "But we can not guarantee that it will not flare up again. It is bone dry and there are still strong winds," he told Adressa. 

 

Morten Heggdal, another local policeman warned that if the fire passed a protective line the fire services had created to the south of the peninsular, it could spread further inland. 

 

Heggdal's colleague Marte Tronstad Dahl said that the fire was the result of the freak weather conditions in the area, with a complete lack of rainfall combined with icy cold and wind.

 

"The result is that the heather and other vegetation have been freeze-dried, and the flames have taken hold and spread explosively as a result," he told Aftenposten.