Herceg Novi fire: second night, 282 tonnes of water

The morning of August 13 looked calmer above Bijela and Baosici. Planes were refilling at Tivat airport and a helicopter at the local stadium. Then, around 1 p.m., the westerly wind picked up. By nightfall the Herceg Novi fire had pushed in new directions, as far as the settlement of Zelenika and toward Kamenari, and the burnt belt was far wider than it had been the day before.

Jovica Misinezovic, deputy commander of the Herceg Novi Protection and Rescue Service, confirmed to Radio Television of Montenegro that the flames had reached Zelenika and that 100 firefighters were on the ground.

Zlatko Cirovic, who commands the service, said crews were posted at critical points along the stretch from Baosici toward Bijela, where houses sit close to dense vegetation.

The fire has also spread toward Kamenari, and unfortunately that is a densely populated area. We are trying to protect it, and the weather conditions dictate how we fight it. The wind is making our work significantly harder.

Is the fire under control

The answer depends on who is speaking, and at what hour.

Interior Minister Danilo Saranovic said in the early afternoon that the situation was under control.

The fire in the Baosici and Bijela area has required the maximum engagement of every available capacity of the system in order to protect citizens and property. At this moment no buildings are threatened, the situation is under control and it is being monitored continuously.

Nikola Simovic, commander of the Montenegrin Army mixed squadron, was more careful.

We have been engaged since early this morning. One crew has just returned from a flight, and the second crew, here you go, the helicopter is ready, it is going up. As far as I know, the fire has been localised, brought under control to a degree, but there is still work to do.

By evening, once the wind returned, Cirovic sounded different.

Our assessment is that we still cannot bring the fire under control, the burnt area is large. Colleagues from other towns are helping us, from Niksic, Cetinje, Bar, Budva, and our solidarity and humanity are showing.

How much water fell on the fire

The Interior Ministry (MUP) released the figures for August 13 after midnight. Aircraft flew 137 sorties that day and dropped 282 tonnes of water, over the Bijela and Baosici site and over Vladimir and Zoganj near Ulcinj.

• three AT-802 planes: 34 sorties and 102 tonnes of water
• an Antonov AN-32P: 10 sorties and 80 tonnes of water
• two Montenegrin Army Bell 412 helicopters: 93 sorties and 100 tonnes of water, all above Bijela and Baosici

Army pilots spent eight hours in the air. What made that pace possible was a mobile pool set up in Bijela itself, which residents spent hours filling alongside the firefighters.

As for the helicopter, the Bell 412, one tonne, one tonne two hundred, depending on the conditions, is the capacity of the firefighting bucket. What is very positive and worth praising is our cooperation with the Protection and Rescue Service, that is with the men on the ground who follow the procedures properly when it comes to using the mobile pool installed in Bijela.

Simovic added that the extinguishing cycle is down to two or two and a half minutes.

The Croatian water bombers never came

Through the Directorate for Emergency Situations, the Herceg Novi service asked for the Civil Protection Mechanism to be activated, a body Montenegro belongs to. The answer was that no help was available, because at that same moment most of the signatory states were burning too, so everything came down to domestic forces. Part of Montenegro’s own air fleet had meanwhile been moved to Ulcinj, where the villages of Gac and Klezna were on fire and the flames had jumped to Sas.

Evacuees went home, then a new evacuation followed

During the first night the Herceg Novi Security Department preventively evacuated 26 residents whose houses stood closest to the flames, and all of them were back home by morning, said Stevan Katic, mayor of Herceg Novi.

The Municipality of Herceg Novi arranged transport and accommodation for them at the Dr Simo Milosevic Institute and at the Talija, and other hotels and households offered help as well. Food and refreshments were provided for those at risk and for all the services taking part in fighting the fire.

When the fire came back in the afternoon, police judged that one more family had to be taken out of its house, in the Todorovici settlement. In Bijelska Vala, residents stood beside their homes in the evening with whatever tools they had, because the fire engine could not reach them along the narrow road and the crew went back for a smaller vehicle.

The crisis headquarters for the Herceg Novi municipality operates out of the Bijela local community office, on the order of the police director, and brings together people from the Directorate for Protection and Rescue, the Herceg Novi Security Department, the Protection and Rescue Service and the municipality. The Police Directorate has ordered operational headquarters set up in every municipality and is establishing the causes of the fires burning at several locations, with drone surveillance.

We wrote yesterday about the night when the houses were defended for the first time and about the ten firefighters who arrived from Trebinje.

Six aircraft from dawn

In a statement issued after midnight, the Interior Ministry announced reinforcements from the air.

Starting tomorrow, from the earliest morning hours, a total of six firefighting aircraft will be activated and deployed to the fire sites in Bijela and Ulcinj, in line with the situation on the ground and the assessment of the competent services.

No statement issued by any service during that evening and night mentioned a single injury or a single house lost. Miodrag Knezevic, head of the Herceg Novi Security Department, described the situation this way in the afternoon, at the point when the fire started coming down off Klin hill.

Thanks to the firefighters’ intervention on the ground, the situation is currently under control, buildings and people are not threatened, and the personnel and residents of that part of Bijela have been warned to stay ready in case we call on them to leave those buildings immediately. There is no need for that so far, the situation is currently under control.

Alongside the Herceg Novi firefighters, crews from Kotor, Tivat, Budva, Cetinje, Niksic, Bar, Risan and Trebinje are on the ground, together with volunteer fire brigades from Boka, Red Cross volunteers, the communal police and private owners who handed over their water tankers.