Nemanjina Street Fire: Seven Rescued From Railways Building
A fire broke out in the Serbian Railways building on Nemanjina Street in Belgrade, directly across from the government headquarters. Seven people were evacuated, none were injured.
A fire broke out on Wednesday, August 26, around 5 p.m., in the Serbian Railways building at Nemanjina Street 6 in Belgrade, in the municipality of Savski Venac. The building sits directly across from the seat of the Government of Serbia. The fire department received the call at 5:11 p.m.
The fire caught the ground floor of the building. By the time firefighting crews arrived, open flames and thick smoke were already pouring out of the ground-floor windows. Footage of the fire quickly surfaced on social media, and judging by it, the smoke was visible even from farther away in the city center. Photos from the scene show dark smoke spreading above the street while flames shoot out from the lower part of the building.
Fourteen firefighters with five vehicles worked to bring the blaze under control. Seven people were evacuated from the building. Four of them were rescued using a hydraulic platform raised along the facade. The remaining three were led out wearing protective smoke hoods, equipment that shields the airways during a brief passage through a smoke-filled space. No one was injured.
A hydraulic platform is typically raised to windows when people cannot safely descend the building’s internal stairwell, most often because of smoke in the hallways. A protective smoke hood is used when the stretch through the smoky part of a building is short and there is a safe exit nearby.
The first report on the fire, published shortly after the call came in, said only that firefighting was underway and that 14 firefighters with five vehicles were on the scene, with no information yet on possible injuries. A later, updated report confirmed the fire had been contained and that no one was hurt.
Investigators cited a faulty air conditioning unit as the cause of the fire. Firefighters first brought the blaze under control and then extinguished it completely. The entire intervention, from the initial call to containment, lasted a little over an hour.
Traffic kept moving
Despite the thick smoke billowing from the building at one of the busiest points in central Belgrade, traffic on Nemanjina and Bircaninova streets flowed normally throughout the intervention. Fire trucks were parked right up against the building while cars continued to pass the scene.
The building where the fire broke out belongs to Serbian Railways. Its location, just steps from the government building, meant the smoke rising above the rooftops was visible from surrounding streets in the city center as well. Nemanjina Street is one of Belgrade’s administrative axes, lined with several state institutions in close proximity, so the fire itself drew the attention of pedestrians and drivers passing through that part of the city.
Authorities are so far citing the air conditioner malfunction as the only established cause of the fire. Unlike most cases in this category, this one involves no suspicion of arson and no criminal complaint, since it stems from a technical fault in the unit. There is no official word on whether a separate inspection procedure has been launched, nor any announcement of further statements from the relevant services.
The number of people who were inside the Serbian Railways building at the moment the fire broke out has not been officially disclosed. The evacuation of seven people, the deployment of five fire vehicles, and the use of a hydraulic platform show that the intervention was treated as serious from the very first moment, even though it ultimately ended without injuries. The case stands as one where a fast response from firefighters and the use of the hydraulic platform prevented more serious consequences in a building right in the heart of the city.
