Published: Less than 40 min ago
A week ago their home was blown up.
Now they stand in the rubble and are furious that they are not getting any help.
– It’s hard enough to sleep anyway after this. It doesn’t get better if you have to be angry all the time, says Pär, 52.
At half past two on the night of March 16, the explosive detonated in the townhouse area in Hässelby in northern Stockholm.
The bang was massive. The house that was the target was completely blown out.
The neighboring houses were also severely damaged. Walls were cracked, doors were thrown out, bathroom china exploded, ceilings ended up askew.
The shards from all the broken windows crunched underfoot as the dazed and shocked people staggered out.
It’s a wonder no one died.
A week later, most of the rubble has been cleared away.
The blown-up house gapes like a dollhouse in the row of townhouses. Everything in there is broken and twisted and covered in gray dust.
The surrounding houses appear at first glance to be fairly undamaged. It’s only the plywood sheets in front of the windows that gossip about what happened.
But it’s worse than it looks on the surface. It wasn’t just people’s safety that took a serious hit that night.
50–60 houses damaged
Electrician Pär, 52, and IT manager Joakim, 49, live with their families in the same area as the terraced house that was blown up.
They sum up:
– We have 94 households in the association. There are twelve of us who have been forced to evacuate, because the houses are too damaged to live in or because they are not considered safe. Another four, five will have to move out soon. There are seven longs with major structural damage. All in all, 50–60 households have suffered damage to varying degrees.
Pär and Joakim were not at home when the explosion happened. But their families were sleeping in the townhouses, just a few meters from the blast.
The first overwhelming feeling was a great relief that the loved ones made it, and that no one else had to take their own life either.
But the relief was replaced by frustration and anger.
They quickly became aware that the bureaucracy chewed on in its usual inexorable slowness even though the whole of existence had literally flown into the air.
Even those who have had their home blown up have to sit in a telephone queue for the insurance company.
And they feel that the support from the authorities is non-existent.
– We have had to solve everything ourselves. Exactly everything.
“No one has heard back”
– The municipality talks about its crisis group. They opened up a leisure farm the next day. It is a good and important activity for children and young people who live a few kilometers away and are worried. But for us here in the epicenter, those of us who have had our homes bombed, those of us who are homeless and shocked and need help with the most basic things, for us it has no bearing whatsoever, says Joakim.
– No one has contacted us from healthcare, the municipality, the state or the police. No one has heard or cared. We have had to arrange everything we needed in the form of crisis support ourselves.
Now Pär lives in a hotel with his wife and daughter. Joakim and his daughter live with friends of the family.
They have had to go into their houses and get some things. Because of the breed risk, it is not safe to stay in there.
The days are spent trying to sort everything out.
– You have to be half rude and very determined to make something happen. I think I called the insurance company 30 times today. This is not about any insurance company being worse or better than another. This is how it works, says Pär.
– There are many elderly people who live here. Pär and I are middle-aged and can handle arguing. Should you have to argue when something like this happens? I don’t think so, says Joakim.
They call for preparedness for this type of event.
– It is not our fault that someone planted a bomb here. Then you think that those who rule the country could step in and say that we should at least not have to lose out on it, not have to work several extra years to pay it off, says Pär.
The neighbors in the area turn to each other. People hug, ask how it is.
Men with helmets and neon yellow work jackets cut and clear among the rubble.
“Will have to be demolished”
Distorted dining room furniture lies in a pile of children’s bicycles and a tattered outdoor grill.
A chair has had its backrest pierced by a sharp wood chip, as thick as a broom handle. You don’t want to think about how it would have gone if someone had been sitting there.
– That is the heart wall, the load-bearing wall, says Joakim and points to the house where the explosive charge detonated.
The wall is cracked like a cracker. Metal supports hold the roof up.
– You can imagine how things are with the neighboring houses, says Pär.
What will happen to the houses is unclear. The engineers and inspectors of the various insurance companies must check and discuss and come to an agreement.
– I think that at least our long one, where the explosion was, will have to be demolished and rebuilt. The only thing that is somewhat like that when completely with us are the bedrooms at the back. In any case, I will not agree to any solution where you have to fix and patch, says Pär.
A family further down the street is staying in their terraced house until further notice. One side of the house was sucked out by the explosion. Now there are two straps holding their house together. Otherwise the wall would fall out.
They say they have to move out of there soon.
– They have to redo this entire loose outer wall. The roof has moved, it also needs to be fixed. And the floors and the bathrooms. There is something in almost every room. We will have to empty everything and move to temporary accommodation for six months.
– This is so much bigger than just a blown-up terraced house. People are feeling bad, even those whose houses have not suffered much damage. It’s children who don’t dare go to school, adults who can’t sleep. A woman there who lives over there crashed and broke down today and they live far away from the explosion, says Pär.
Part in a gangster war
According to previous information, the explosion in Hässelby is part of the gang war between the gangsters known as the “Kurdish fox” and the “Greek”. The target of the explosion is said to have been a male relative of a rapper who openly showed his support for the Kurdish fox.
An adult man, a resident of the terraced house that was blown up, was taken to hospital after the explosion.
– I have no updates on the state of the damage, but the initial assessment was not life-threatening. We were able to talk to him before he went to hospital, writes Stockholm police spokesperson Carina Skagerlind in an email.
At the end of the week, three people were in custody for involvement in the explosion.
Two are on probable grounds (the higher degree of suspicion) suspected of attempted murder and public destruction. One is suspected on probable grounds of aiding and abetting public destruction and gross violation of the Act on Explosive and Flammable Goods.
Police: Can’t inform everyone
With reference to the fact that it is an ongoing preliminary investigation, the police do not want to say anything about what type of explosive charge was used in Hässelby.
With the same justification, the police also do not want to answer whether they knew that there was a threat image against the family that was the target of the attack.
Residents are critical of not being told anything, that they lived there and thought they were safe, and then this happens. What is the police’s comment on that?
– In Stockholm County, there are approximately 1,500 people who are in the network criminal environments. We also see that there are new people, previously unknown to us, in the criminal environment. These have thousands of relatives and we work all the time to encourage those who are threatened or exposed to crime to report it to the police so that we can make a threat and risk assessment. I think most people can see the difficulty and in many ways both complex/legally impossible in informing a very large number of neighbors to thousands of relatives, writes Carina Skagerlind.