Fire near Lacarak and Martinci cuts visibility on road
Flames burned on both sides of the road and the cause is unknown. Volunteer fire brigades also reported a blaze in Despotovo, where 320 round hay bales burned.
A fire broke out beside the road between Lacarak and Martinci in Srem, and thick smoke covered the carriageway, cutting visibility to a minimum. According to published footage, flames burned on both sides of the road on the evening of September 29. The cause has not been established, and no information on injuries has been released.
What is known about the fire near Lacarak?
Footage published by the Instagram page 192.rs shows smoke lying across the road and fire on both sides. The caption read: “Apocalyptic scenes between Lacarak and Martinci, smoke has covered the whole road, fire is burning on both sides. Visibility is at a minimum.”
Drivers are advised to use alternative routes, B92 reports. The Vojvodjanski Reporter writes that the fire reached farmland covered in crop residue and that fire crews were sent to the scene to contain it and stop it spreading to neighboring plots and buildings. How much land burned is not stated in the published sources.
Is it a motorway?
The sources disagree. Mondo reports a fire beside the motorway between Lacarak and Martinci. B92 writes about the Lacarak and Martinci section, and the Vojvodjanski Reporter about a road route, and neither of those two mentions a motorway. What kind of road it is remains unclear in the reports relayed here, so only the description of the section is used.
Despotovo: 18 hours to put out 320 round bales
Another fire was reported the same day in Despotovo, near Backa Palanka. According to Dnevnik, the blaze, which engulfed 320 round hay bales, was contained after 18 hours of continuous work. Colleagues from Backa Palanka helped the Despotovo volunteer fire brigade from the start, and firefighters are still watching the site because of the risk of it flaring up again.
Why the work took so long was explained by the brigade itself, in a post relayed by Informer:
“Everyone who knows anything about firefighting knows how complicated and difficult fires like this are. When 320 round bales of hay are burning, putting them out is not just pouring water - literally every bale has to be carefully pulled apart, turned over and soaked through, because inside it can smolder for hours and flare up again when we least expect it.”
At the end of the post the volunteers said: “The fire site is under our watchful eye and we continue to monitor the situation.” The cause of the fire, any injuries and the extent of the damage were not given.
Silbas and Djurdjevo: two more fires in Backa
Informer also relays a post from the Silbas volunteer fire brigade about a fire that covered an area of more than 30 hectares. The date of the fire is not given in that report. The brigade says the “fire started with the burning of stubble on one of the fields”, but that because the wind kept changing direction it was not possible to establish reliably which plot it began on. The fire spread toward fields that still have crops on them.
A member of the brigade went out with a tractor and a ripper and plowed up and cut through the path of the fire in several places.
On the road between Djurdjevo and Sajkas in southern Backa, farmland burned, Dnevnik reports, citing Vojvodina Uzivo. Thick black smoke rose high and the wind reduced visibility. One comment, which Dnevnik relays from Telegraf, says a rubbish dump burns there and burns almost every evening, so the cause is not clear-cut.
What are firefighters saying, and what does the law say?
Burning crop residue in the open is banned by law, and violators face heavy fines, the Vojvodjanski Reporter recalls. Firefighters from Silbas urge: “Do not burn stubble, grass or plant residue!”
The same brigade warns that the days are still warm and dry. This time, they say, they managed to stop the fire before it did greater damage, but “next time we may not have that much time”.
