A catastrophic explosion has destroyed Sweden’s newest and most ambitious water park, leaving one man dead and a city struggling to comprehend how a facility that had not yet welcomed a single guest could erupt into an inferno that reduced a $120 million investment to smoldering wreckage in a matter of minutes.
The Oceanana Waterworld, an expansion of the century-old Liseberg amusement park in Gothenburg, was in its final weeks of construction when a fire that investigators now believe was caused by improperly welded plastic piping tore through the structure with terrifying speed, culminating in a blast that sent shredded steel and glass hurtling into surrounding streets.
The disaster unfolded on a freezing Monday morning in early 2024, when workers arrived at the construction site expecting another day of final preparations before the park’s scheduled April inspection. The project was meant to be a crown jewel in Gothenburg’s plan to transform Liseberg into a year-round tourist destination, featuring Europe’s first six-person raft rides and the world’s tallest Master Blaster water coaster.
Instead, the site became the scene of one of Sweden’s most infamous construction disasters, a tragedy that has raised profound questions about safety oversight, contractor qualifications, and the catastrophic consequences of cutting corners on a project of immense scale and complexity.
The stage for the disaster was set a day earlier when workers missed a critical deadline on one of the park’s flagship attractions, the Rattler Slide, a twisting plunge designed to simulate a descent into the belly of a snake. The ride’s entrance was positioned on the fourth floor of a tower, with external tunnels that re-entered the building before terminating in the main pool.
Complications had prevented the slide’s completion. The ride used diversion pipes to redirect water through various sections, and while most of the system was already in place, one pipe was missing a crucial component. The part was expected to arrive that morning, but the park’s plumbers refused to install it, citing safety concerns about the elevated diversion system.
Rather than accept further delays, the slide’s manufacturer, Whitewater, stepped in to finish the job themselves. A separate company provided welding equipment, but the work was outside Whitewater’s area of expertise. Neither the company’s staff nor the site’s managers were aware that the installation presented a serious fire hazard.
The only training they received was a brief instruction on using the welding equipment from the plumbing company.
Compounding the danger, Oceanana had no working fire alarm system. The site’s temporary alarms had been dismantled a week earlier and replaced with a permanent system intended for the park’s opening. However, that system was being tested that morning and was not fully operational, meaning that when the first signs of trouble emerged, no automatic alert was triggered.
As inspection teams made their way to the pool hall to conduct final checks before the Rattler’s afternoon test, several inspectors noticed a distinct smell of burning rubber. Despite the odor, nothing appeared out of place inside the hall. Without functioning fire alarms, they continued their work as usual, unaware that a deadly chain of events had already begun.
Shortly after, technicians began manually testing the fire alarms, running several drills as workers dismissed the increasingly strong smell of burning. The timing could not have been more tragic. Just as the alarm test concluded, fitters working on the pipes beneath the Rattler heard a strange rushing sound.
At first, they assumed it was simply water being released through the system.
That assumption proved fatal. Staff on the water slide tower soon noticed smoke coming from the Rattler and began evacuating people from the area. Simultaneously, a worker called site manager Patrick Gilholm, who was inspecting the fifth floor of the tower.
Their phone call disconnected shortly after the worker warned Patrick about the situation.
Surveillance cameras captured the smoke moments later. Approximately two minutes after that, fire erupted from two locations on the Rattler, directly above the area where the welders had been working. The flames spread with alarming speed, and although fire sensors on the tower’s upper floors detected the blaze, the system was still in test mode and failed to trigger a general alarm.
Thick black clouds poured into the pool hall within a minute. Startled workers rushed to call emergency services, who dispatched several fire trucks to the scene. But by the time they arrived seven minutes later, the fire had already spread through the Rattler’s tunnels, and a massive column of smoke was rising over the site.
A worker approached the firefighters with alarming news: he had not heard from Patrick since their phone call, and no one else on the site had seen him. Fearing the worst, firefighters immediately attempted to control the blaze while a rescue team entered the building, guided by two courageous construction workers who volunteered to help navigate the complex structure.
The team climbed the stairwell, initially finding it smoke-free and feeling optimistic about locating the missing manager. But when they opened the door on the third floor, they were met with standing black smoke that made further progress impossible. Rescuers instructed the construction workers to retreat downstairs and search the immediate area in front of the door while they returned to the stairway to reassess their options.
They had not yet assessed the structural risk to the building and had no idea what conditions awaited them inside. Their search options were severely limited. As they deliberated their next move, smoke began pouring into the stairwell, forcing them to evacuate the building entirely.
Outside, fire crews battled desperately to control the blaze, but the fire had grown into an unstoppable inferno. Flames had already consumed most of the side tunnels jutting out from the building and were creeping toward the main structure. Before they reached it, a site engineer suggested starting the park’s pumps to flush water through the slides.
Fire crews agreed and activated the system, but the water barely made a difference against the raging fire.
Meanwhile, the rescue team struggled to find a route to continue their search for Patrick. Ironically, their inability to re-enter the building may have saved their lives. In a blinding flash, the top of the tower erupted in a sudden explosion, setting off a ripple of smaller blasts throughout the burning slides.
Shredded steel beams and shards of glass were hurled into nearby buildings, and the walls of the water park were blown out into the streets.
Emergency services immediately pulled back from the structure as it became unclear what had caused the explosion. Sections of the frame were warped out of place, and officials feared the building could collapse at any moment. The blast also fueled the inferno, sending a wave of scorching flame through the slide tunnels.
The dense smoke rising above the tower became thicker, and the main pool halls and slides inside the building were engulfed in flame.
No one could believe what they were witnessing. In just fifteen minutes, a $120 million site had transformed into a burning wreckage. But a greater concern loomed: the fire could spread to nearby buildings.
Oceanana was surrounded by offices, preschools, and residential areas, and the burning plastic was spreading toxic fumes across the local area.
With these risks in mind, fire crews focused on fighting the flames from the most stable sections of the site and resumed their search for Patrick where it was safe to do so. They needed to contain the spread as much as possible and prepare nearby areas for a potential evacuation.
Approximately half an hour after the explosion, they managed to extinguish the blaze in the pool hall. But most of the site was still ablaze, and the situation was far from under control. The rising smoke could be seen from eight miles away, and a growing wind spread the fumes beyond the immediate area.
Emergency services began gathering information about the building’s design and, over the next few hours, took precautions in the surrounding area. This included removing anything in danger of exploding due to the heat, such as portable gas cylinders, and protecting a nearby chemical store. In a worst-case scenario, they also prepared to destroy physical connections between buildings, such as walkways, to stop the fire from reaching the Oceanana Hotel.
Fortunately, the flames remained contained to the main building, and by midafternoon, responders regained access to the first two floors of the tower. They continued searching for Patrick, but they still did not have control of the fire, and several sections remained at risk of collapsing. Following protocol, rescuers used drones to search parts of the building they could not access while remaining crews fought to extinguish the flames.
After several hours of searching, they still could not find him. At 7:00 p. m.
, police finally notified his relatives and announced that a man was missing following the explosion. “We have been looking for him during the day,” authorities stated. “We cannot say with certainty that he has not been at the scene, but we cannot search large parts of the building due to the heavy fire and the risk of collapse.”
Approximately an hour later, the search operation was scaled back, and firefighters continued to extinguish the blaze through the night. The following morning, the situation had not improved. The fire raged uncontrollably.
Rescuers had not found Patrick, and they could not enter large sections of the damaged structure.
On a positive note, the burning water park did not pose a risk to neighboring buildings, and the worst of the toxic fumes had stopped spreading. But emergency services faced a long road before they could declare the site safe, and there was no telling how many people might be undiscovered among the smoldering rubble.
Over the next four days, the fire service slowly extinguished the remaining hot spots. Parts of the building continued to collapse, and a crane truck was used to remove unstable debris. When responders finally accessed what was left of the tower and pool hall, they made the discovery everyone had dreaded.
At midday, rescuers found Patrick lying lifeless on the fifth floor of the tower. They continued searching for bodies until the evening and finally terminated the rescue operation at 7:00 p. m.
Oceanana was supposed to mark another century of success for Liseberg. Instead, the city was left wondering how everything had gone so wrong so quickly.
Once the site was declared safe, investigators from the Swedish Accident Investigation Authority began gathering evidence. They quickly determined that the fire had started in the water tower area, but almost everything that could have revealed the source had been incinerated. Officials therefore scrutinized the work completed in the hours before the blaze.
The only task that generated heat was the piping installation by Whitewater staff. Specifically, a large pipe outside the tower had been welded together at both ends, which coincided with the staff on the tower noticing smoke. After taking a closer look, authorities discovered the pipes were made of PE plastic and joined together using a process called electrofusion.
Electrofusion works by inserting the ends of the plastic pipes into a socket containing an electric coil. The coil is then heated, melting the plastic to create a single continuous tube. Given that PE is highly flammable, the process requires specialized welders and precise measurements to be performed safely.
If the pipes are not pushed far enough into the socket, the heated metal wires become 𝓮𝔁𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓭. When this happens, they quickly overheat and can ignite.
Investigators immediately suspected faulty welding was the source of the fire. They ran tests on pipes of the same size as those used in the Rattler. In every test, if the gap was too large, the PE began to smolder.
Fires ignited inside the fitting after approximately eighteen minutes, and these fires were impossible to see until the flames grew significantly.
Whitewater technicians confirmed it took them seventeen minutes to join the first end of the diversion pipe. This meant the plastic had around thirteen minutes to smolder before workers noticed a burning smell in the pool hall at 9:30 a. m.
, closely reflecting the time it took for flames to intensify in testing. After reviewing the evidence, investigators determined the gaps between the pipes were between two to four times larger than their allowable limit, a clear sign they had found the fire source.
Despite training programs being available, nobody on site was qualified to perform electrofusion. All three companies involved also failed to complete a thorough risk assessment, and Whitewater could not even produce plans for the piping’s design for investigators to inspect. The lack of oversight and planning meant Oceanana went without fire alarms for a week while Whitewater staff installed piping across the park’s attractions.
When their lack of training finally caused the Rattler’s diversion pipes to ignite, hot air shot through them like a chimney, which the fitters mistook for rushing water. They burst into flame at lightning speed, and the blaze spread to the flammable fiberglass slides. By the time anyone knew what was happening, the park was already beyond saving.
The Swedish Accident Investigation Authority recommended that Liseberg, NCC, and Whitewater improve how they manage safety on site, with a stronger focus on preventing risks before they occur. Fire experts continue to debate what caused the explosion. The leading theory is that unburnt gases rose to the top of the tower and ignited from the heat of the inferno.
Oceanana was completely destroyed in the fire. Legal proceedings are ongoing to determine who, if anyone, is at fault. The park is being rebuilt and is set to open in 2026.
Although tragic, Patrick was the only fatality in the disaster. He was the closest to the fire inside the building and died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Nobody else was seriously harmed, with sixteen people treated for smoke inhalation.
The disaster has sent shockwaves through Sweden’s construction and amusement park industries, raising urgent questions about safety protocols on large-scale projects and the risks of relying on contractors to perform work outside their expertise. For the city of Gothenburg, the loss of Oceanana represents not only a financial setback but a profound human tragedy that will be felt for years to come.
As investigators continue their work and legal proceedings unfold, the people of Gothenburg are left to mourn a man who lost his life in a disaster that many believe could have been prevented. The rebuilding of Oceanana stands as both a testament to the city’s resilience and a somber reminder of the price of inadequate safety oversight.