A fire broke out on Tuesday evening, 20 October, in a ground-floor flat at the Hämeenkatu–Vapaudenkatu corner in Jyväskylä. Central Finland rescue services were called at 18:47. Firefighters confirmed to Yle after 21:00 that an adult man had died. That is a death at the scene, not a sentence and not a named author.

The fire stayed in the flat where it started. Smoke filled the stairwell and reached other homes. The block has five storeys and 48 flats, at Hämeenkatu 5, across from the old drinks factory on Vapaudenkatu. Yle saw flames at a ground-floor window around 19:00, with people still inside.

Iltalehti, following the rescuers’ notice, writes that smoke divers put the fire out and aired the stairs. Early on, one resident was taken off a third-floor balcony. Emergency crews checked 16 people; four were taken to hospital. Some had left through the smoky stairwell; others had breathed smoke near the building.

At the peak there were 11 fire appliances, plus ambulances, police and, in the evening notice, social crisis staff. Hämeenkatu and Vapaudenkatu were closed and reopened around 21:00. Rescue work ended at 22:30; clearance continued.

Three people were given emergency shelter; others went to people they knew, because flats on the affected stair were declared uninhabitable. The Finnish Red Cross was on site. That is the follow-on from smoke and evacuation, not a second fatality.

Police technical officers and the rescue service’s fire investigation are looking at the course and the cause. Until a result, we do not write an author and we do not take later headlines of suspicion as a conviction. The closed fact is the toll: one adult man dead, 16 checked, four in hospital, one person taken from a balcony, the fire not spread through the rest of the block.

Image: Tiia Monto, a pier in Jyvaskyla harbour, 12 July 2013, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons; the 2013 harbour, not a photograph of the Hameenkatu fire.

Sources consulted: One died in an apartment fire in Jyvaskyla - Yle; One person died in a fire in Jyvaskyla - Iltalehti.