Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
For members

LANDSLIDE

IN NUMBERS: Sweden’s lucky escape as landslide causes huge motorway sinkhole

A busy Swedish motorway moved 50 metres as waves of mud came crashing down on the road. The incident is expected to cause months of traffic chaos – but numbers show that it could have been much worse.

Published: 25 September 2023 10:23 CEST
IN NUMBERS: Sweden's lucky escape as landslide causes huge motorway sinkhole
Miraculously, no one died in the landslide. Photo: Björn Larsson Rosvall/TT

E6

The main motorway that connects Gothenburg and Oslo.

01.20am

A massive landslide at a motorway rest stop near Stenungsund is believed to have started at 1.20am, with emergency service SOS Alarm receiving the first call at 01.46am.

700 by 200 metres

An area of around 700 by 200 metres was directly affected by the landslide, with the worst parts destroying an area of around 150 by 100 metres, completely tearing up the motorway.

50 metres

Emergency services believe that the road in some places moved as much as 50 metres.

IN PICTURES:

The E6 motorway is destroyed in both northbound and southbound direction. Photo: Hanna Brunlöf Windell/TT

Three

Three people were taken to hospital with minor injuries. One of them was able to leave hospital on Sunday.

Zero

Fortunately, no one died in the landslide.

Police and rescue services have searched the area with dogs and don’t believe that anyone is still trapped in the mud and debris.

The injury count could have been much higher if the landslide had happened during rush hour, instead of in the early hours of Saturday.

“It’s unbelievably lucky that it happened in the middle of the night,” HannaSofie Pedersen, a climate expert at the Swedish Geotechnical Institute, told the TT news agency.

Ten truck drivers

Around ten truck drivers who had parked their vehicles along a slip road in the area overnight witnessed the landslide. They described waking up to loud noises and seeing the earth move.

One fast-food restaurant

A Burger King restaurant, a fuel station, a car wash and a DIY store are located at the scene. The restaurant, which completely collapsed under the mud, bore the brunt of the damage.

One construction site

Police are investigating whether blasting works at a nearby building site may have caused the landslide. The Aftonbladet newspaper reports that the company owning the site had dumped leftover sand close to the motorway in violation of their permit – a practice that caused a similar landslide at Munkedal in 2006. The company however denies any wrongdoing.

10,000-12,000 vehicles

The number of vehicles that normally pass Stenungsund on the E6 every day.

They will now be rerouted via the E45 and the 650 road, with transport authorities urging drivers to primarily choose the E45 option.

Several months

Sweden’s Transport Administration believes it’s going to take “several months” to repair the road.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

MONEY

Swedish central bank lowers interest rate for first time in eight years

Sweden's Riksbank central bank has lowered the country's main interest rate by 0.25 percentage points to 3.75 percent, down from 4 percent. This is the first time the bank has lowered the rate since 2016.

Published: 8 May 2024 09:31 CEST
Swedish central bank lowers interest rate for first time in eight years

The decision to lower the so-called policy rate was widely expected, as the central bank itself indicated in a policy rate prognosis from March that it could lower rates between five and six times before the end of 2025, starting in either May or June this year.

“Monetary policy and diminishing supply shocks have contributed to inflation falling, and now it’s nearing the target,” the bank wrote in a press statement.

The bank’s inflation target is 2 percent. In March, inflation was just 2.2 percent.

“If the inflation outlook remains the same, the policy rate could be lowered at least two more times in the second half of the year,” the bank wrote, adding that new information since its most recent monetary policy report was published in March “strengthens the picture of inflation also being closer to the target in the slightly longer term”.

This effectively rules out the possibility of a further rate cut in June.

It also warned that the outlooks for inflation are “uncertain”, highlighting the strong American economy, geopolitical unrest and the krona’s exchange rate as risk factors which could cause inflation to rise again.

“Changes to monetary policy should therefore be taken carefully, with gradual cuts to the policy rate.”

Thursday’s announcement is crucial, as the policy rate is the bank’s main monetary policy tool. It decides which rates Swedish banks can deposit in and borrow money from the Riksbank, which in turn affects the banks’ own interest rates on savings, loans and mortgages.

If bank interest rates are high, it’s expensive to borrow money, which means people spend less and as a result inflation drops.

This cut to the policy rate won’t immediately lower the cost of your mortgage, but it’s likely to have a knock-on effect.

At its last meeting before the cut, the bank chose to keep rates the same at 4 percent, where they stood since September last year – the highest policy rate seen in Sweden since 2008, and the end of almost a year and a half of interest rate hikes.

The bank predicted in March that the policy rate could drop to as low as 2.75 percent, a drop of 1.25 percentage points, by the end of 2025. If mortgage rates also drop by the same amount, it would reduce the cost of a 3 million kronor mortgage by around 3,000 kronor a month.

The new rate will come into effect on May 15th.

SHOW COMMENTS