Obilicev Venac Garage Fire: Police Search for Two Young Men
Fire broke out Sunday evening on the protective netting at the Obilicev Venac garage in Belgrade. Police are searching for two young men seen on camera; the garage reopened normally this morning.
What happened
Fire broke out on the protective netting covering the facade of the Obilicev Venac garage in downtown Belgrade on Sunday evening, September 27, on the fourth level of the building. Media outlets differ on exactly when the flames started: Nova.rs and Mondo report it happened around 8 p.m., Pink.rs says firefighters were alerted at 8:48 p.m., while Telegraf puts the time at around 9 p.m.
The first reports from the scene, from Nova.rs, NS Reporter and B92, said a car parked on the fourth level caught fire and that flames spread from the panel on the facade to other levels. Pink.rs later gave a different account: the initial call was indeed about a burning vehicle, but firefighters arriving at the scene found the protective netting on the facade on fire, burning on several levels at once.
What the surveillance video shows
Footage from a security camera, which surfaced on social media, shows two people standing by the railing on the garage’s fourth level. A few seconds after one of them walked away, smoke appeared at that spot, followed by flames. According to Mondo, the second person just stood and watched before both fled.
Police are now working to identify the two young men seen in the footage and are establishing the full circumstances of the fire. It has not yet been officially confirmed whether the fire was deliberately set or was an accident.
Response and aftermath
According to Pink.rs, two fire engines and nine firefighters responded to the scene. NS Reporter reports that two crews from the Zvezdara Fire and Rescue Unit led the firefighting effort. Police in the meantime closed off the streets leading to the garage to give firefighters unobstructed access.
Mondo reports that around 500 vehicles were parked in the garage when the fire broke out, with more than 50 people inside the building at the time. No one was injured, and the fire did not spread into the garage’s interior or reach any parked vehicles. Material damage was limited to the external protective netting on the facade.
Garage back to normal operation this morning
The Public Parking Management Service confirmed this morning that the structure and interior of the garage suffered no damage that would compromise the safety of its users. The Obilicev Venac garage is operating as usual today and is open to all users, while crews from the relevant services have been removing the burned sections of netting from the facade since the early morning hours.
The building has already been the focus of fire safety work. In early August, the parking service announced a renovation of the fire protection on the garage’s steel structure: old coatings were stripped from the load bearing elements and replaced with new ones more resistant to fire and corrosion. The new system is meant to keep the structure stable for 60 minutes at temperatures above 500 degrees, with a 15 year warranty. Certified rope access technicians worked on the hard to reach exterior sections of the facade.
The cause of Sunday night’s fire has not yet been officially determined. The final picture of what happened will depend on the on site investigation and on whether police manage to identify the two young men seen in the security camera footage.
