Response to the large fire was delayed - alarms had to be sent by SMS

In normal cases, emergency personnel are alerted by pagers, but when the fire was to be called out, the alarm was not received.

Instead, the staff had to be alerted via SMS.

- We don't know for sure, but we can state that there was extensive rain and thunderstorms in the immediate area a little while before this happened.

If it could have affected our technical equipment, that is a theory, but we don't know, says Mats Jansson, rescue manager of Södra Dalarna's rescue service association.

Everyone in the building had gotten out on their own when the emergency services arrived on the scene.

The building quickly became completely engulfed in flames and the decision was made to let it burn down.

Fire hydrants lacked water

The disabled alarm systems weren't the only problem the emergency services had to deal with either.

- When I arrived, they had tested a fire hydrant that was quite close to the burning house, but they couldn't get any water out of it.

Then we had to look further and found a fire hydrant 200 meters away from which we could take water instead, says Stefan Lundqvist, rescue leader at the operation.

The rescue forces managed to draw water from the functioning fire hydrant before the water in their own tanker ran out.