Vaasa,(or Vasa), Finland is on the west coast of the country, and has a population of approximately 57,300. Vaasa is a part of the administrative province of Western Finland and the region of Ostrobothnia. While the city is bilingual, about 70 percent of its residents call Finnish their native language, with the remaining residents speaking Swedish. Thus, the city is very important for Finland/Swedish culture. There is a great deal of information regarding a fire in 1852. The city was made of wood and was heavily populated, and even though the fire started in an outhouse, most of the town was on fire by noon, and the fire lasted for hours. By evening, most of the town had burned down. Only 24 privately owned building had survived, one of which is now a museum. A courthouse, some guard houses, and a psychiatric hospital also survived, and the ruins of several of the other buildings can still be found in the same places they originally stood. A great deal of the material lost were records and documents about Vaasa and the people who lived there.