Baosici: Houses Evacuated, About 50 Were at Risk
Several houses were evacuated as a precaution, and the Herceg Novi fire chief says about 50 homes were at risk at one point. All have been defended so far, but the wind is strengthening.
The fire that broke out on the afternoon of August 12 above Bijela and Baosici, in the Herceg Novi municipality of Montenegro, had become the countrys most serious fire by nightfall. It crossed to the Baosici side, and Boka News reports it came dangerously close to houses behind the town. Bijela and Baosici spent the afternoon without electricity and without running water.
Timeline of the day
- 3:40 p.m. The fire starts in the Baosici settlement, the Interior Ministry says in its first statement.
- 4:06 p.m. RTCG reports that Bijela and Baosici are without power, citing the local community council. Its headline was later amended to add and water.
- 4:14 p.m. Portal Analitika publishes reader photographs. At that point no official information has come from the Herceg Novi rescue service.
- 4:19 to 4:26 p.m. Boka News shoots and publishes images from the coastal road. Forest is burning above the childrens home in Bijela, above the hamlet of Kovacina.
- 5:08 p.m. The ministry says every available vehicle and firefighter of the Herceg Novi service is deployed and that two aircraft have been sent. Through the 112 centre, Kotor and Tivat and the volunteer brigades of Perast, Bijela and Tivat are called in.
- 5:54 p.m. CDM reports the fire has reached the edge of houses and a church.
- around 9 p.m. Boka News films a line of flame above the houses. The fire has crossed toward Baosici, and the bura wind has fanned it.
- 9:31 p.m. The ministry publishes its flight tally and says four fires are active in Montenegro, the worst of them in Baosici.
- 11:05 p.m. It is confirmed that several houses have been evacuated as a precaution and that every threatened building has been defended up to that point.
- 11:39 p.m. Cetinje sends two engines and five firefighters as reinforcements.
How much water fell on Baosici
The tally the ministry published at 9:31 p.m. is the first hard number on the air operation.
“During the day, aircraft of the Interior Ministrys Directorate for Protection and Rescue were engaged at several locations, including the areas of Niksic, Bar and Herceg Novi, and as the situation developed they were redirected to the fire site in Baosici. Two Air Tractor AT-802 aircraft were engaged at this site and dropped a total of 72 tonnes of water over 24 sorties, while an Antonov AN-32P flew 7 sorties, dropping 56 tonnes of water on the site”
That is 128 tonnes of water over 31 sorties, on a single fire. The line about redirection matters: the same aircraft had been working over Niksic and Bar earlier in the day and were moved here once it was clear where the worst of it was.
The other three active fires are at Ponikvice near Niksic, on Mount Lisinj near Bar, and at Velje Duboko near Kolasin, where the fire is under control. The fire in the Podgorica neighbourhood of Doljani was put out with help from a Montenegrin Army helicopter, which flew twice for a combined four hours and 35 minutes and dropped 55 tonnes of water.
The ministry says shifting winds are making the work harder and are driving how each fire develops.
Where exactly it is burning
The sources do not agree on the location, and that is not a detail when the question is who is at risk. The Interior Ministry places the fire in the Baosici settlement. RTCG, citing the local community council, puts it on the hill above Zager, above the childrens home in Bijela. CDM writes that it is burning on the hill between Bijela and Baosici. After the fire crossed the ridge in the evening, the three descriptions effectively converge: what is burning is the ridge that separates the two towns.
The institution below the fire is not merely a local one. The Mladost childrens home in Bijela was founded in 1946, and after the home in Pljevlja was merged into it in 1949 and the one in Prcanj in 1960, it became the only institution of its kind in Montenegro. It has 90 places and its address is Jadranska magistrala 10, directly on the road beneath the burning hillside. As of publication no source has reported that the home is threatened or that any house has burned. The evacuation described by the Directorate covers a few houses next to the fire itself, not the home.
Footage published in the afternoon by the Serbian portal 192.rs shows how close the fire was to residential buildings even before it crossed the ridge.
Why both places also lost water
Power and water went together, which is the usual consequence when a transmission line feeding the pumps in the water network drops out. According to descriptions from the ground, the fire is spreading along precisely the corridor the power line follows.
Montenegros power distribution company, CEDIS, said earlier the same day, at 2:35 p.m., which is before this fire started, that lines in areas threatened by fires were being switched off preventively at the request of the rescue service.
“So yesterday, August 11, at the request of the Protection and Rescue Service, the 35 kV Tuzi line was switched off because of the fire in the Podgorica neighbourhood of Doljani. Today, August 12, the 10 kV Krzanja line was switched off, as were the 35 kV Herceg Novi - Topla - Igalo line and the 10 kV Kavac - Trojica feeder. Our crews are in the field and in constant contact with the Protection and Rescue Service”
CEDIS added that supply is restored as soon as firefighters contain a fire and the network passes a safety check. The lines named in that statement serve the western side of the municipality, Topla and Igalo, so the outage in Bijela and Baosici cannot be attributed to those shutdowns. It came later, and from the other side of the bay.
How many people this affects
Bijela is a coastal settlement north of Herceg Novi, by the Verige strait, with 3,691 residents at the 2011 census. Baosici, further along the same stretch toward Kotor, had 1,346. Those are permanent residents, before counting the visitors who fill the coast in mid-August.
This is not an isolated fire along the same Dinaric ridge. A state of natural disaster was declared for the Konjic area in Herzegovina today, along with a request for aerial support, after the fire above the village of Kanjina spread in several directions. The common factor is wind.
The night is what decides this one. The terrain above Zager is the kind of karst on which a ground fight drags on: the fire near Trebinje, which we covered on August 9, was put out only on its ninth day, with a front line that at one point stretched almost ten kilometres.
