This is an incredibly fast process, that's what we can see at the moment.
The wooden facade is helping things move quickly, everyone who was there saw that, says Mattias Lindvall, duty incident commander at the Mälardalen Rescue Service.
He himself was at the row of townhouses in Arboga about 30 minutes after the alarm, which came in at 1 p.m.
When I arrived, there was already catastrophic damage.
It had burned to the ground, there were no walls, no roof, no building, he says.
Two rows of townhouses
The focus of the fire service was to try to save the second row of townhouses that had caught fire, and to try to prevent further spread.
Liselott Åsberg Samuelsson, who lives next to the fire-ravaged townhouse area, told TT on Friday that she was worried that her house would also catch fire.
"It was so hot when I came out that it almost felt like my house was going to catch fire. I sprayed the facade with a water hose just to do something, you feel so powerless," she says.
During the night, the emergency services completed their operation and on Saturday the police cordons were reduced and now only cover the two affected rows of townhouses.
According to Magnus Jansson Klarin, press spokesman for the police in the Central region, it concerns two buildings with about ten apartments in each. At least 18 apartments have been destroyed.
It burned like hell, he says.
Two more row houses have been evacuated. The goal is for the residents of those houses to be able to return during the day.
Police have no information that anyone was seriously injured in the fire.
Because there is still a risk of smaller fires breaking out, the police have not yet been able to begin a technical investigation into what caused the fire.
“Depressed and sad”
Arboga Municipality has called in its crisis support group to take care of those affected, who have been provided with temporary accommodation.
Many solved it themselves with the help of relatives and friends, but for those who need help we arrange hostels and the like, says Carl Björnberg, emergency officer at the municipality.
The municipality continues to have a crisis center open and a crisis hotline to contact.
It's depressing and sad, of course, but still quite calm, says Carl Björnberg about the mood among those affected.
