Suva Planina Fire Spreads to Gadzin Han

The wildfire burning on Suva Planina crossed overnight from the Bela Palanka side of the mountain range onto the territory of the Gadzin Han municipality. At the same time, the flames pushed toward Bojanine Vode, a hiking area on the section of the mountain that belongs to Nis. More than 100 people are on the ground, and a Russian Ilyushin aircraft has once again joined the firefighting effort, according to the Interior Ministry’s Sector for Emergency Situations.

The fire is burning hardest around the Devojacki Grob mountain crossroads, at an elevation of 1,300 meters. The area around Trem, the highest peak of Suva Planina, has also been hit, and smoke is now visible from every side of the mountain.

Srdjan Mitrovic, head of the Sector for Emergency Situations, said the fire around the Trem peak is the reason it can be seen spreading from every direction across the massif. Since the morning of September 5, according to the same statement, the advance of the fire from Devojacki Grob toward the Nis side of the mountain has been stopped, the only piece of good news after a night in which the blaze jumped into a new municipality.

Professional firefighters, teams from the Russian Humanitarian Center, volunteer fire brigades, workers from the state forestry company Srbijasume and a large number of mountaineers are working on the ground. Late last night, students from the University of Nis who are taking part in the blockade movement joined the effort, along with citizens’ assemblies that called on all able-bodied people to help fight the fire.

The Russian Ilyushin plane made two passes over the mountain the previous day and flew over Suva Planina again this morning to support the people battling the flames by hand. The terrain has been described throughout as extremely difficult to access, forcing firefighters, forestry workers and volunteers to carry water to the fire line in backpacks, for kilometers along steep mountain trails.

According to the Sector for Emergency Situations, the population of villages in the Gadzin Han and Bela Palanka municipalities, as well as settlements within the city of Nis, is not at risk, since there are no buildings at that elevation. Near the village of Sopot in the Pirot municipality, where a separate fire also broke out earlier, the blaze has been brought under control. The same source reports no injuries.

Suva Planina sits between the territories of Nis, Bela Palanka, Gadzin Han and Pirot, and the fire has reached all four municipalities over the past several days. It first broke out on the Bela Palanka side and near the village of Sopot in the Pirot municipality, then climbed to the Devojacki Grob and Trem peaks, and has now crossed into Gadzin Han territory, while its path toward the Bojanine Vode excursion site near Nis has, for now, been halted.

Sources differ on when and where the fire actually started. N1, citing information the Beta news agency obtained from foresters involved in the firefighting effort, reports that the blaze broke out in a beech forest above the Bela Palanka villages of Veta and Kosmovac, in the morning hours of the day before. That detail does not appear in the Tanjug report, which states only that the fire hit a part of the mountain facing Nis and spread to Gadzin Han overnight. Earlier reports suggested the mountain had already been burning for a second day, which, if the Beta agency’s information is confirmed, would mean the fire has been active since September 3.

Portal Srpske previously reported that the Suva Planina fire had reached the trail leading to Trem, in a story that followed the first day of the blaze spreading along the ridge. The current push toward Gadzin Han, combined with the halted advance toward Bojanine Vode, shows the fire front is shifting, while the bulk of the firefighting effort still relies on manual work on the ground and air support from the Ilyushin.