Göteborgsbranden 1998 - Myndigheten för samhällsskydd och ...

SUMMARY
The 1998 Gothenburg Fire
Larsåke Larsson and Stig Arne Nohrstedt
Introduction
In 1998, just before midnight on the night before the All Saint's Day holiday – more precisely,
October 29 at 11.42 p.m. – a fire breaks out in Gothenburg, Sweden, at the meeting hall
of the Macedonian Association. Aparty is underway in which almost 400 young people are
participating – most of them from families of foreign origin, representing 19 nationalities.
The meeting hall, with an official capacity for considerably fewer visitors, is rapidly engulfed
in flames. Intensive rescue efforts are launched, but are delayed by several minutes due to
problems in localising the fire following the alert – the first alert came via a cellular phone
from the disc jockey inside the burning hall and was rather diffuse. Sixtythree young people
died in the fire and 213 are injured.
The local news media are on site quickly and are able to document the rescue work, witnessing
some young people jumping from windows and others dying, as well as traumatic
scenes in which relatives arrive to find their children dead or injured. Several TV media
choose to interview rescued youngsters who criticise the police and fire brigade for preventing
them from re-entering the seat of the fire to try to pull out their trapped friends,
thereby insinuating that the rescue team has occasioned unnecessary fatalities.
The present study focuses on four topics: 1) local and national authorities’ information
to primarily relatives and media (and thereby to the public), as well as these authorities’
crisis management work with victims and relatives in various districts in Gothenburg; 2)
young people’s experiences in connection with the fire; 3) journalists’ (as well as photographers’)
and media editors’ working conditions; 4) levels of confidence in local authoreties
among Swedes and immigrants.
The aim of the study is to analyse the following aspects of problems surrounding information
and communication in connection with the fire:
• Authority communication with news media and relatives in particular, as well as their
co-ordination of crisis readiness and crisis management.
• How young people closest to the victims evaluate authorities’ actions and information,
as well as the rumours being spread.
• How journalists assigned to report on the fire and its consequences experienced this
assignment and how they dealt with it ethically and morally.
• What importance the fire may have had for the public’s – and in particular immigrant
groups’ – confidence in various social institutions.
The investigation is based primarily on personal interviews with actors in the various categories
– a) government, local authority and hospital representatives, b) young people and
251