Fire in Norway Hotel Kills 14 : Helicopter Used to Aid Evacuation of 121

Fire raged through an 11-story hotel this morning, killing 14 people and injuring at least 50 of the 121 people evacuated down ladders and by helicopter, police said.

One of the victims jumped to his death from a window of the Hotel Caledonien in this coastal city 160 miles southwest of Oslo, the capital, the Norwegian news agency NTB reported.

The 14 dead included three Swedes and a Briton, police said, and the rest were Norwegians.

Between 50 and 60 hotel guests were taken to a hospital, but most were treated and released, police spokesman David Stamnes told national NRK radio. Nineteen people were still being treated for shock and injuries, he said, adding that the fire had been brought under control.

“Some guests panicked. Some were screaming out of open windows,” 36-year-old Arne Gudem of Stavern, one of the survivors, said on the radio. “I escaped by balancing on a cornice outside my window to reach a ladder.”

Two hundred people, including 60 soldiers, fought the fire and helped rescue the guests, Stamnes said. The effort was complicated by heavy smoke.

“This was the most dramatic rescue operation in a fire in Norway,” Oslo Fire Brigade Chief Oddmund Schei said. “It was the first time people were evacuated by helicopter from a burning building.”