Deliblatska Pescara Fire: No Hotspots as Wind Returns
Morning patrols found no active hotspots in the Deliblatska Pescara reserve, but the wind is picking up, so crews and thermal camera drones keep watching a day after 149 flare ups.
No active hotspots were recorded in Deliblatska Pescara this morning. Firefighting crews remain on standby in the field, and the wind, which had been easing over the past few days, is picking up again.
The previous day, August 31, brought more small hotspots than the days before it, one of them confirmed by satellite imagery. Between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., crews carried out 149 extinguishing operations and kept the fire from spreading further. These were responses to smaller, isolated flare ups, not a new large scale blaze.
The night before September 1 passed quietly, with no major hotspots. Drones continue to monitor the terrain around the clock, backed by thermal cameras that can catch smoke the ground crews would otherwise miss. Staffing and equipment on site have not been scaled back, since the stronger wind still carries the risk that the situation could flare up again, even though the morning brought no new hotspots.
The Fire Has Been Burning Since August 5
The Deliblatska Pescara wildfire broke out on August 5. By August 11, it had burned nearly 3,000 hectares of forest and low vegetation, including 600 to 700 hectares of tree canopy, with the rest made up of low scrub that regrows faster. The Deliblatska Pescara Special Nature Reserve covers 35,000 hectares, so in those first days the fire had reached less than a tenth of its total area.
More than 300 firefighters, workers from the forestry company Vojvodinasume and local residents were deployed to fight the blaze in those days, supported by helicopters, heavy machinery and chainsaw crews widening forest firebreaks and clearing the pines around them.
While the fire was still active on August 11, Roland Kokai, director of the public enterprise Vojvodinasume, said from the field:
The houses have been saved. The forest will grow back.
The statement came at a moment when the fire had, on some days, reached the edges of properties in the Sumarak settlement, making the fact that no homes had burned one of the few certainties in a fight that was still far from over. Kokai also described what the daily work on the ground looked like:
Every day we clear more of these forest firebreaks. Some run about 20 meters wide, and where the terrain allows it, up to 70 meters. So far we have cleared 28 kilometers of firebreaks, and we still need about seven more, and then we can say we have taken every technical measure available to bring the fire under control.
Firebreaks as a Barrier, and Six Quiet Days
By August 31, crews had widened those firebreaks and cleared strips to a combined 90 kilometers, which through August served as a barrier against the fire spreading further through the sand steppe. All settlements in the burned area were declared safe by that point, and by the same date crews had logged six days in a row without a new hotspot.
The current picture, a morning with no hotspots at all, continues that run and confirms that conditions in the reserve have calmed compared with the fire’s first weeks. Still, the wind picking back up is why firefighters are not yet announcing an end to their watch. Thermal cameras and drones remain the main tool for catching smoke invisible to the naked eye, and personnel and equipment stay deployed on the same shift schedule as in previous days.
Authorities have not announced a date for when the watch might be lifted. Until the wind eases and hotspot free days stack up into a longer streak, monitoring the terrain by drone and thermal camera remains the daily routine in Deliblatska Pescara.
