20 teen-agers perish in Swedish fire

Press, 12 June 1978, Page 1

20 teen-agers perish in Swedish fire

NZPA-Reuter Boraas Twenty young persons celebrating their graduation from school died early yesterday when fire swept through a five-storey hotel in the southern Swedish city of Boraas. The police said that 55 were injured, including some who broke their legs jumping from windows, in the fire which gutted the 70-year-old Boraas Stadshotell.

It is not known what caused the fire, the worst in Sweden for many years. Police reports varied from a fire-bomb thrown into the hotel to a lamp exploding over a gambling table.

All the dead were aged between 18 and 20, most of them having been trapped in the second floor hotel restaurant.

Several hundred young people had gathered in the

i restaurant to celebrate the end of their school year. About 150 still there at 2.30 am. were about to get up for the last dance when the fire broke out. Panic gripped the restaurant as the flames spread quickly. One survivor said he nearly suffocated because the fire had used up the oxygen inside the hotel within minutes. Fi.-emen who fought the fire for about six hours said they had to prevent some of the survivors rushing back inside the inferno to search for missing friends.

About 10 hotel guests trapped on upper floors jumped to safety or were rescued by firemen using extension ladders. Four seriously injured victims were flown by helicopter to. special burntreatment units in other parts of Sweden.