N1SRP — broadcast
20260920 013000 UTC
372 transcript segments
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking
Data courtesy of The GDELT Project (https://www.gdeltproject.org/), from the Internet Archive TV News Archive.
Machine transcription. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a verbatim quotation record.

[00:00:00] Deliblatska Peščara became Deliblatska Pustara, those
[00:00:03] who tried to answer this question could go to
[00:00:07] prison for spreading panic. We should not
[00:00:10] use
[00:00:14] it
[00:00:16] through political, through alleged political
[00:00:19] struggle untruths
[00:00:23] so that someone could collect certain
[00:00:27] political points. That's simply.
[00:00:30] That's not true, it's false, it's ultimately
[00:00:33] shameful, it's also hypocritical. Who lied
[00:00:37] on August 7th, when this same minister stated that
[00:00:41] Serbia does not need help?
[00:00:44] This was a fire on August
[00:00:47] 5th. Look.
[00:00:50] This was a fire on August
[00:00:53] 7th. He states that things are under
[00:00:56] control. You should have already activated
[00:01:00] the EU civil protection mechanism, not claimed that you have
[00:01:04] everything under control. Afterwards, you dealt with geopolitics
[00:01:08] securing overflight permits for a Russian plane, while
[00:01:11] the fire lasted for a month. During
[00:01:15] that time, the political fire on public service is being extinguished
[00:01:18] by the commissioner, even the one for information of public importance,
[00:01:22] and for the protection of equality, who describes everything that
[00:01:26] is successful in the burned special nature reserve.
[00:01:30] Obviously, there is fertile ground for the spread of that
[00:01:33] not, this fire, disinformation that breaks out there
[00:01:37] where you expect it, and then a lot of people
[00:01:40] obviously fall for it without realizing that they might sometimes
[00:01:44] cause panic, that they might sometimes commit a crime. Does
[00:01:48] the same criterion for causing panic
[00:01:51] apply when pro-regime media speculate that Albanians
[00:01:54] wanted to cause fires? This was
[00:01:57] an attempt to cause chaos
[00:02:00] in the south of central Serbia, some most likely Albanian
[00:02:04] terrorists uh, so they fired a
[00:02:08] so-called fire-ball, that's some device with a parachute that was
[00:02:11] fired to cause a fire somewhere. While
[00:02:15] the fire in Banat was raging, the government's propaganda machine was
[00:02:19] silent, and when the problem became so great that it could not
[00:02:23] be ignored, the prosecutor's office threatened proceedings to establish
[00:02:27] responsibility for spreading panic and unrest. "Dare
[00:02:30] we even talk about fires while the pre-election
[00:02:34] campaign is escalating, they are panicking because it's Vučić's pre-election
[00:02:37] campaign and so now they are threatening, trying to
[00:02:41] silence people, especially on social networks, who are throwing
[00:02:44] out continuous piles of examples, inadequate reactions,
[00:02:47] lack of equipment, machinery, and ultimately
[00:02:50] a complete lack of any planning, those firefighters
[00:02:54] died there, those unfortunate ones, the fire came
[00:02:57] from behind them, we see that in the videos, so..." "I see who
[00:03:01] is panicking there, people who were extinguishing the fire made
[00:03:04] superhuman efforts," says the leader of the Serbia Center party, but
[00:03:08] he believes that the problem arose from the organization,
[00:03:11] I assume that this is a consequence of that SNS
[00:03:14] staffing, primarily with insufficiently qualified
[00:03:18] people in leadership positions and because
[00:03:21] politics interferes with the profession, here it interfered again, Vučić
[00:03:25] says I said not to call or when to call, who are you to
[00:03:28] say that... There should be automatic procedures that are
[00:03:32] applied in such a situation, at that time this is how the
[00:03:35] special nature reserve looks in a country that is, according to the president,
[00:03:39] a European superpower when it comes to
[00:03:43] the equipment of aircraft for firefighting. Miodrag
[00:03:46] Sovilj, N1
[00:03:48] Belgrade.
[00:03:50] Mr. Milanović, you are not involved in politics, but has politics interfered with
[00:03:54] the profession, uh, and all of this that we have seen and that we
[00:03:58] have been able to follow. during the past month or so
[00:04:01] days,
[00:04:04] well, I believe it has, otherwise some
[00:04:07] information would have been available to everyone, uh, namely,
[00:04:11] the Sector for Emergency Situations on August
[00:04:15] 8th requested help from the Copernicus
[00:04:18] system for rapid
[00:04:21] mapping of burnt areas, probably because they
[00:04:25] saw that the area was quite large, and they
[00:04:28] could use that information to better bring
[00:04:31] the fire under control, so
[00:04:34] if on the 8th
[00:04:38] it was assessed that there was a problem
[00:04:41] with extinguishing this fire, then
[00:04:44] we later heard from the news, for example,
[00:04:48] that information lasted several days that the burnt area
[00:04:52] was 3,500 hectares, and through
[00:04:55] this system, all citizens, if they wanted to, could
[00:04:59] see that this area was significantly larger. This
[00:05:03] then creates distrust in other information you receive from
[00:05:06] the responsible party, and then we came to the point that
[00:05:10] applied, it's not enough to have it on on the 11th, help was allegedly requested from Russia.
[00:05:13] If on the 11th there was information that this
[00:05:16] help was necessary, why was the question not asked why it was not requested
[00:05:20] from the European Union, that is, why the
[00:05:24] civil protection mechanism
[00:05:27] of the European Union was not activated, which was activated
[00:05:31] on August 20-something, when we requested official help from
[00:05:34] the European Union, and when we were sent
[00:05:37] four helicopters and some other
[00:05:41] countries. "firefighting units from
[00:05:45] Romania, Germany
[00:05:47] and I think one group arrived from Hungary, uh,
[00:05:51] in any case, if it had arrived 10 days earlier or
[00:05:54] 12, we would assume somehow logically, we don't have to be great experts, that the
[00:05:58] situation on the ground would still be different,
[00:06:02] well, now we can assume
[00:06:04] a lot,
[00:06:06] but it's very, very likely, on the other hand, it's easy to be a general
[00:06:09] after the battle, it should have been then
[00:06:12] this..." "unfortunately the situation is what it is, we now
[00:06:16] have the consequences of all that, mhm,
[00:06:19] which we are facing, that is a burned area of over
[00:06:23] 12,000 hectares, that's let's say a net
[00:06:26] burned area, which will certainly be much
[00:06:29] larger, uh, because
[00:06:32] within that area, uh, we have
[00:06:35] many of these green oases that are not currently visible
[00:06:39] as burned areas, there was probably some..." residual
[00:06:42] fire or even if
[00:06:46] entire system,
[00:06:48] it will be damaged and there will certainly be damage to those forests
[00:06:52] and the damage will be probably around
[00:06:55] 15-16,000 hectares, which is
[00:06:58] roughly almost 50% of the
[00:07:02] Deliblatska Peščara area, in the second part we will talk about
[00:07:05] rehabilitation possible
[00:07:07] renaming of that area which I mentioned in the introduction, just a quick
[00:07:11] question before. uh before the commercials, you mentioned here, of course,
[00:07:15] that we asked for help from the European Union, uh
[00:07:18] helicopters arrived, you talked a lot
[00:07:21] about how we actually save money, and then it all costs us a lot, and
[00:07:25] that helicopters are often not used immediately
[00:07:28] when the fire is small, when it might be possible to, if not completely
[00:07:31] extinguish it, at least bring it under control
[00:07:35] uh because that problem, of course, we don't have
[00:07:39] anywhere to draw water from when it comes to Canadair planes, Serbia has a different
[00:07:42] configuration, but is that problem with the use of helicopters
[00:07:46] which, of course, we know are expensive, questionable?
[00:07:49] Well, I don't know what the situation was specifically regarding
[00:07:52] this fire in Deliblatska Peščara, I think I saw
[00:07:55] somewhere in the news that they very quickly activated at least
[00:07:59] 21 or I'm not sure,
[00:08:02] and activated a helicopter, but generally the experience of ours for that
[00:08:05] 11.5 or some other time when the fire was small, I don't have
[00:08:09] specific information, but I can say generally... that
[00:08:12] during last year and previous years, helicopters were
[00:08:16] used very restrictively in firefighting, and
[00:08:20] they should be used as much as possible and not spared in those initial
[00:08:24] phases when a fire first appears, because then it is easiest
[00:08:27] to bring the fire under control, thus
[00:08:30] saving resources,
[00:08:33] because one hour of helicopter flight costs, I
[00:08:36] assume, between five or ten thousand euros, those
[00:08:39] are not small resources if you are extinguishing a small
[00:08:43] fire, you will extinguish it for an hour or two. Later
[00:08:47] we witnessed that throughout the day, three to four
[00:08:51] helicopters flew, uh for several,
[00:08:54] I think ten days or more, in any case, it's a topic for consideration, let's go
[00:08:58] briefly to commercials, we'll be back in the studio.
[00:09:18] We are back in the N1 Television studio, the show Red Line, tonight we are talking about
[00:09:22] fires in the region that were raging during the summer,
[00:09:25] now they are calming down a bit in September, but unfortunately some
[00:09:29] are still active, we talked about Croatia and Serbia in the first
[00:09:33] part of the show, Bosnia and Herzegovina somehow remained aside, but let's
[00:09:36] mention some data according to the World Bank report from 2004,
[00:09:40] so two years before
[00:09:43] what we are witnessing now and an increased number
[00:09:46] of fires, and according to data from the European Forest Fire Information
[00:09:50] System, fires in Bosnia and Herzegovina between
[00:09:53] 2006 and 2018 affected about
[00:09:56] 320,000 hectares of land, or 7%
[00:10:00] of the country's territory, from 2019 to 2024, another
[00:10:03] 310,000 hectares were affected.
[00:10:07] Uh, of course, this country
[00:10:10] forest land covers even 63% of the territory. And official data about
[00:10:13] the total damage in this country
[00:10:17] actually do not exist, unofficial estimates speak of losses of several
[00:10:20] tens of millions of dollars, Mr. Kasalo,
[00:10:24] these are... data, of course, that I have just presented, according to
[00:10:28] some European data, they don't seem
[00:10:30] promising
[00:10:32] at all,
[00:10:35] uh, with outdated equipment that we have already witnessed and planes that we have
[00:10:38] talked about, Republika Srpska has them, uh,
[00:10:41] the Federation also, but they are simply not intended for
[00:10:45] specialized firefighting, uh, of course, and
[00:10:48] the status of firefighters for
[00:10:50] amendments to the law have actually not been on the agenda for a long
[00:10:54] time. Uh, what is then the future of Bosnia and
[00:10:58] Herzegovina, and we see 63% of the territory under
[00:11:01] forests.
[00:11:03] Right, you're right, exactly as you said, if
[00:11:06] these problems of firefighters' status
[00:11:10] and funding from higher levels are not resolved
[00:11:13] soon, not just, about 90% of it falls on
[00:11:16] local self-government, i.e., cities and
[00:11:20] municipalities,
[00:11:22] uh, the situation will not be good.
[00:11:25] Because there are also volunteer fire departments operating
[00:11:28] in municipalities and cities, they play a large role in
[00:11:32] preventing and extinguishing forest and
[00:11:36] agricultural fires, and
[00:11:39] they have no advantage with us, they act voluntarily simply
[00:11:42] because they love people and nature and want
[00:11:46] to protect their own
[00:11:50] We saw that a lot of it comes down to these volunteer fire
[00:11:53] brigades. On social media there was also
[00:11:57] a story about a 21-year-old girl, Lara Gvozden,
[00:12:01] who is mentioned as having participated as a minor with her father,
[00:12:04] so somehow family traditions are in question
[00:12:07] when opting for this
[00:12:10] type of humane calling, but it cannot just
[00:12:14] be reduced to volunteer fire
[00:12:16] departments. That's right, Lara
[00:12:20] Gvozden, she's a member of the volunteer fire department,
[00:12:23] Svetlana Lištan, and she acted as a child. I
[00:12:27] know her personally, but also, once she became
[00:12:31] an adult, she actively participated in these
[00:12:34] larger fires that were active in Bosansko
[00:12:37] Grahovo and now the one that was in the area of
[00:12:40] Dimere, Poliš village, Lištani, Rujani,
[00:12:43] Prazlija, truly an exceptional person, not just
[00:12:46] her, but all the members of both volunteer societies
[00:12:50] that operate in the city area, meaning the volunteer fire department,
[00:12:54] Vidoške and Svetlana Lištani. But I want
[00:12:56] to emphasize that a way must be found to financially
[00:13:00] help these volunteer fire departments and also solve
[00:13:03] the issue
[00:13:05] of professional firefighters, improve the military
[00:13:09] park, the premises where they are on duty
[00:13:11] and reside,
[00:13:14] and we need to focus on education,
[00:13:15] professional development,
[00:13:18] and local self-governments alone cannot handle this, and
[00:13:22] new technologies must be applied. You talk
[00:13:26] with colleagues from Croatia and Serbia about these new technologies
[00:13:30] and warnings, and Herzegovina is not
[00:13:33] the case, I don't know, not only when it comes to familiar, but also other natural
[00:13:36] or other disasters, we really
[00:13:39] need to, it's high time to take
[00:13:42] concrete measures, that's clear,
[00:13:46] this year, I think, has provided enough warnings, and Bosnia and
[00:13:49] Herzegovina needs to approach this prevention, although we see, even in European
[00:13:53] Union countries, well. Uh, it is further advocated that
[00:13:57] prevention, uh, uh, is important, early
[00:14:00] detection, uh, I still wanted just one more question
[00:14:04] related to Deliblatska Peščara and actually to other
[00:14:07] areas that suffered fires, at
[00:14:11] some point I mentioned that actually in the Serbian Parliament, while
[00:14:14] it was still burning in uh Deliblatska
[00:14:17] Peščara, urgent amendments to the law were made that would
[00:14:21] enable the re-purposing of this land for other purposes.
[00:14:25] Mr. Milanović, did you follow that, can we really
[00:14:29] expect, we saw President Vučić
[00:14:32] who denied it and said that as long as he is in any position, he will not
[00:14:35] allow the re-purposing of land
[00:14:38] in Deliblatska Peščara, but is there, as they say,
[00:14:42] where there's smoke, there's fire, unfortunately that's
[00:14:44] how it's said, do you expect such
[00:14:48] changes?
[00:14:50] Well, I hope that it will not come to fruition in practice,
[00:14:54] although... "such an amendment to the law was really not
[00:14:58] needed at such a moment when we had
[00:15:01] the biggest fire ever recorded in
[00:15:05] Serbia so far since records have been kept,
[00:15:09] so in some
[00:15:12] countries like Greece and
[00:15:15] Spain uh the re-purposing
[00:15:19] of land that has burned in fires is not allowed
[00:15:22] and that measure lasts for 30 or
[00:15:26] 50 years, something like that should perhaps
[00:15:29] be introduced here, simply to
[00:15:33] dispel that doubt. that
[00:15:35] someone wants to
[00:15:38] perhaps by burning forests
[00:15:41] create or open space for other
[00:15:44] activities for some other uh
[00:15:48] businesses that would later be carried out there, right? The accusations are certainly serious,
[00:15:51] and we won't talk a priori now, but these
[00:15:55] are the facts we present, that this law, or rather the amendments to the law, were adopted
[00:15:59] at that time in the Serbian Parliament, of course, the opposition had its
[00:16:03] reasons why it commented on it that way, but the expert
[00:16:06] public. in the first place was not even informed about it, we'll see
[00:16:10] what happens next, Mr. Tucaković, when it comes
[00:16:14] to Croatia, uh
[00:16:16] burned areas, what about them?
[00:16:20] Well, first of all, I can thank all those who helped in the first
[00:16:24] days, especially Miša, to help with the remediation, to remove
[00:16:27] those vehicles, so all those communal enterprises in the burned areas
[00:16:31] of course need to clean those areas,
[00:16:34] meaning Croatian Forests, so all of them proceeded to
[00:16:38] remove fallen trees and so on, that's now the positive thing that happened, so
[00:16:41] that all that is cleared, of course we need to renew, so
[00:16:45] the forests, so we can't leave that to chance again, for Aleppo
[00:16:49] pines to grow only by themselves and then again we have a new
[00:16:53] problem in five years, a new
[00:16:56] cover that will burn again very quickly, so
[00:17:00] we need to approach this truly professionally, and I would really leave this
[00:17:03] to the experts, those foresters who must answer
[00:17:06] such questions, what to do, we have time,
[00:17:10] we have experience now in all of this, and let's try to
[00:17:13] solve it, so we need to leave it to expert
[00:17:17] people, yes, that's when it comes to the forest and what will be planted and so on, but I didn't
[00:17:20] just ask you that, but you heard what is happening in Serbia, that the
[00:17:24] land is simply being re-purposed into something. There is, yes, that can be done very
[00:17:28] easily, through legal solutions, so with burnt land, so I think
[00:17:32] we even have it resolved that it is impossible to do anything there for the next 10 years, that can
[00:17:35] be done. It can be resolved with different legal
[00:17:39] solutions, and so we need to make a story about that, not that someone
[00:17:43] burns it and then has building land, which is pointless, it makes
[00:17:46] no sense, but simply we need to protect nature from
[00:17:49] construction, from concreting and all that is happening, so we are at the end of the
[00:17:53] show, just briefly, you heard the association "I Love Omiš"
[00:17:57] officially requested from six competent
[00:18:00] institutions to determine who made the decision not
[00:18:04] to use this warning system that we have already
[00:18:07] talked about, you heard that. Yes, yes, yes, we received
[00:18:10] that inquiry, the response is being prepared for that
[00:18:14] association. Yes, well, we'll see what the result is. Briefly,
[00:18:17] the question we mentioned, more prevention, less operational, how can that happen?
[00:18:21] In Serbia, briefly only.
[00:18:24] Well, more investment is needed in uh, controlling
[00:18:28] combustible material, meaning preventing the accumulation of combustible
[00:18:32] material, which can be solved in several ways, first of all
[00:18:35] my colleagues, foresters, must... that these measures that will reduce
[00:18:39] the risk of fire should be more incorporated
[00:18:43] into forest management plans, on one hand, on
[00:18:46] the other hand, we need to think about changing the legal
[00:18:49] regulations that would allow the use
[00:18:52] of so-called preventive burning out of season,
[00:18:55] mhm, in order to reduce the accumulation of
[00:18:59] combustible material and reduce the likelihood of these large
[00:19:02] fires that can cause great damage, well, when it comes to Bosnia and Herzegovina,
[00:19:06] in one sentence. And the same question, so, more
[00:19:10] prevention, less operational, how is that in your case, briefly only.
[00:19:13] Well, in the same way in the area, well, for the city
[00:19:17] there is also a large forest area, we have
[00:19:20] frequent large forest fires on Dinara
[00:19:23] and funds must be found
[00:19:26] for building fire roads, clearings, also
[00:19:30] forest farms that operate there, must
[00:19:34] have their trained people on the other
[00:19:38] hand, fire detection, but also, we have
[00:19:41] the awareness of the older population, these
[00:19:44] shepherds who, because we have large, large limestone
[00:19:47] fields, rough areas, then they
[00:19:50] use old methods of clearing their meadows, so
[00:19:54] that is the human factor that is also something to consider, that's right, that's
[00:19:57] right, which is almost 95%, if not more is
[00:20:01] a factor, are caused by the human
[00:20:04] factor, we need to go for change.
[00:20:07] and a different way of thinking about the harmfulness of burning
[00:20:10] agricultural land and
[00:20:13] reducers
[00:20:18] And literally, uh, Mr. Tucaković, for the end, it was your
[00:20:22] sentence that I quoted several times, yes, that's my
[00:20:25] sentence, meaning more prevention, less operational, so investment
[00:20:28] in prevention, not only these roads but also through legal
[00:20:32] solutions, more institutions, so the forest
[00:20:35] law, the agricultural land law, the fire protection law,
[00:20:39] so several laws need to be harmonized and
[00:20:42] applied, but also controlled, whether they are
[00:20:47] paper. Thank you very much for being guests on tonight's
[00:20:51] show. Well, I think we somehow tried to determine whether it is
[00:20:54] possible to have more prevention, less operational, it seems
[00:20:58] it's not impossible, but that the human factor is important, that
[00:21:01] prevention could be controlled, i.e. applied
[00:21:05] from kindergartens onwards through schools, so that people
[00:21:09] are educated, first children and then older people, on how to
[00:21:12] protect themselves from forest fires which are spreading
[00:21:15] across the region this year, unfortunately. Thank you for being
[00:21:18] with us. See you next Friday at the same time. Good night.