Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:00Deliblatska Peščara became Deliblatska Pustara, those
00:00:03who tried to answer this question could go to
00:00:07prison for spreading panic. We should not
00:00:10use
00:00:14it
00:00:16through political, through alleged political
00:00:19struggle untruths
00:00:23so that someone could collect certain
00:00:27political points. That's simply.
00:00:30That's not true, it's false, it's ultimately
00:00:33shameful, it's also hypocritical. Who lied
00:00:37on August 7th, when this same minister stated that
00:00:41Serbia does not need help?
00:00:44This was a fire on August
00:00:475th. Look.
00:00:50This was a fire on August
00:00:537th. He states that things are under
00:00:56control. You should have already activated
00:01:00the EU civil protection mechanism, not claimed that you have
00:01:04everything under control. Afterwards, you dealt with geopolitics
00:01:08securing overflight permits for a Russian plane, while
00:01:11the fire lasted for a month. During
00:01:15that time, the political fire on public service is being extinguished
00:01:18by the commissioner, even the one for information of public importance,
00:01:22and for the protection of equality, who describes everything that
00:01:26is successful in the burned special nature reserve.
00:01:30Obviously, there is fertile ground for the spread of that
00:01:33not, this fire, disinformation that breaks out there
00:01:37where you expect it, and then a lot of people
00:01:40obviously fall for it without realizing that they might sometimes
00:01:44cause panic, that they might sometimes commit a crime. Does
00:01:48the same criterion for causing panic
00:01:51apply when pro-regime media speculate that Albanians
00:01:54wanted to cause fires? This was
00:01:57an attempt to cause chaos
00:02:00in the south of central Serbia, some most likely Albanian
00:02:04terrorists uh, so they fired a
00:02:08so-called fire-ball, that's some device with a parachute that was
00:02:11fired to cause a fire somewhere. While
00:02:15the fire in Banat was raging, the government's propaganda machine was
00:02:19silent, and when the problem became so great that it could not
00:02:23be ignored, the prosecutor's office threatened proceedings to establish
00:02:27responsibility for spreading panic and unrest. "Dare
00:02:30we even talk about fires while the pre-election
00:02:34campaign is escalating, they are panicking because it's Vučić's pre-election
00:02:37campaign and so now they are threatening, trying to
00:02:41silence people, especially on social networks, who are throwing
00:02:44out continuous piles of examples, inadequate reactions,
00:02:47lack of equipment, machinery, and ultimately
00:02:50a complete lack of any planning, those firefighters
00:02:54died there, those unfortunate ones, the fire came
00:02:57from behind them, we see that in the videos, so..." "I see who
00:03:01is panicking there, people who were extinguishing the fire made
00:03:04superhuman efforts," says the leader of the Serbia Center party, but
00:03:08he believes that the problem arose from the organization,
00:03:11I assume that this is a consequence of that SNS
00:03:14staffing, primarily with insufficiently qualified
00:03:18people in leadership positions and because
00:03:21politics interferes with the profession, here it interfered again, Vučić
00:03:25says I said not to call or when to call, who are you to
00:03:28say that... There should be automatic procedures that are
00:03:32applied in such a situation, at that time this is how the
00:03:35special nature reserve looks in a country that is, according to the president,
00:03:39a European superpower when it comes to
00:03:43the equipment of aircraft for firefighting. Miodrag
00:03:46Sovilj, N1
00:03:48Belgrade.
00:03:50Mr. Milanović, you are not involved in politics, but has politics interfered with
00:03:54the profession, uh, and all of this that we have seen and that we
00:03:58have been able to follow. during the past month or so
00:04:01days,
00:04:04well, I believe it has, otherwise some
00:04:07information would have been available to everyone, uh, namely,
00:04:11the Sector for Emergency Situations on August
00:04:158th requested help from the Copernicus
00:04:18system for rapid
00:04:21mapping of burnt areas, probably because they
00:04:25saw that the area was quite large, and they
00:04:28could use that information to better bring
00:04:31the fire under control, so
00:04:34if on the 8th
00:04:38it was assessed that there was a problem
00:04:41with extinguishing this fire, then
00:04:44we later heard from the news, for example,
00:04:48that information lasted several days that the burnt area
00:04:52was 3,500 hectares, and through
00:04:55this system, all citizens, if they wanted to, could
00:04:59see that this area was significantly larger. This
00:05:03then creates distrust in other information you receive from
00:05:06the responsible party, and then we came to the point that
00:05:10applied, it's not enough to have it on on the 11th, help was allegedly requested from Russia.
00:05:13If on the 11th there was information that this
00:05:16help was necessary, why was the question not asked why it was not requested
00:05:20from the European Union, that is, why the
00:05:24civil protection mechanism
00:05:27of the European Union was not activated, which was activated
00:05:31on August 20-something, when we requested official help from
00:05:34the European Union, and when we were sent
00:05:37four helicopters and some other
00:05:41countries. "firefighting units from
00:05:45Romania, Germany
00:05:47and I think one group arrived from Hungary, uh,
00:05:51in any case, if it had arrived 10 days earlier or
00:05:5412, we would assume somehow logically, we don't have to be great experts, that the
00:05:58situation on the ground would still be different,
00:06:02well, now we can assume
00:06:04a lot,
00:06:06but it's very, very likely, on the other hand, it's easy to be a general
00:06:09after the battle, it should have been then
00:06:12this..." "unfortunately the situation is what it is, we now
00:06:16have the consequences of all that, mhm,
00:06:19which we are facing, that is a burned area of over
00:06:2312,000 hectares, that's let's say a net
00:06:26burned area, which will certainly be much
00:06:29larger, uh, because
00:06:32within that area, uh, we have
00:06:35many of these green oases that are not currently visible
00:06:39as burned areas, there was probably some..." residual
00:06:42fire or even if
00:06:46entire system,
00:06:48it will be damaged and there will certainly be damage to those forests
00:06:52and the damage will be probably around
00:06:5515-16,000 hectares, which is
00:06:58roughly almost 50% of the
00:07:02Deliblatska Peščara area, in the second part we will talk about
00:07:05rehabilitation possible
00:07:07renaming of that area which I mentioned in the introduction, just a quick
00:07:11question before. uh before the commercials, you mentioned here, of course,
00:07:15that we asked for help from the European Union, uh
00:07:18helicopters arrived, you talked a lot
00:07:21about how we actually save money, and then it all costs us a lot, and
00:07:25that helicopters are often not used immediately
00:07:28when the fire is small, when it might be possible to, if not completely
00:07:31extinguish it, at least bring it under control
00:07:35uh because that problem, of course, we don't have
00:07:39anywhere to draw water from when it comes to Canadair planes, Serbia has a different
00:07:42configuration, but is that problem with the use of helicopters
00:07:46which, of course, we know are expensive, questionable?
00:07:49Well, I don't know what the situation was specifically regarding
00:07:52this fire in Deliblatska Peščara, I think I saw
00:07:55somewhere in the news that they very quickly activated at least
00:07:5921 or I'm not sure,
00:08:02and activated a helicopter, but generally the experience of ours for that
00:08:0511.5 or some other time when the fire was small, I don't have
00:08:09specific information, but I can say generally... that
00:08:12during last year and previous years, helicopters were
00:08:16used very restrictively in firefighting, and
00:08:20they should be used as much as possible and not spared in those initial
00:08:24phases when a fire first appears, because then it is easiest
00:08:27to bring the fire under control, thus
00:08:30saving resources,
00:08:33because one hour of helicopter flight costs, I
00:08:36assume, between five or ten thousand euros, those
00:08:39are not small resources if you are extinguishing a small
00:08:43fire, you will extinguish it for an hour or two. Later
00:08:47we witnessed that throughout the day, three to four
00:08:51helicopters flew, uh for several,
00:08:54I think ten days or more, in any case, it's a topic for consideration, let's go
00:08:58briefly to commercials, we'll be back in the studio.
00:09:18We are back in the N1 Television studio, the show Red Line, tonight we are talking about
00:09:22fires in the region that were raging during the summer,
00:09:25now they are calming down a bit in September, but unfortunately some
00:09:29are still active, we talked about Croatia and Serbia in the first
00:09:33part of the show, Bosnia and Herzegovina somehow remained aside, but let's
00:09:36mention some data according to the World Bank report from 2004,
00:09:40so two years before
00:09:43what we are witnessing now and an increased number
00:09:46of fires, and according to data from the European Forest Fire Information
00:09:50System, fires in Bosnia and Herzegovina between
00:09:532006 and 2018 affected about
00:09:56320,000 hectares of land, or 7%
00:10:00of the country's territory, from 2019 to 2024, another
00:10:03310,000 hectares were affected.
00:10:07Uh, of course, this country
00:10:10forest land covers even 63% of the territory. And official data about
00:10:13the total damage in this country
00:10:17actually do not exist, unofficial estimates speak of losses of several
00:10:20tens of millions of dollars, Mr. Kasalo,
00:10:24these are... data, of course, that I have just presented, according to
00:10:28some European data, they don't seem
00:10:30promising
00:10:32at all,
00:10:35uh, with outdated equipment that we have already witnessed and planes that we have
00:10:38talked about, Republika Srpska has them, uh,
00:10:41the Federation also, but they are simply not intended for
00:10:45specialized firefighting, uh, of course, and
00:10:48the status of firefighters for
00:10:50amendments to the law have actually not been on the agenda for a long
00:10:54time. Uh, what is then the future of Bosnia and
00:10:58Herzegovina, and we see 63% of the territory under
00:11:01forests.
00:11:03Right, you're right, exactly as you said, if
00:11:06these problems of firefighters' status
00:11:10and funding from higher levels are not resolved
00:11:13soon, not just, about 90% of it falls on
00:11:16local self-government, i.e., cities and
00:11:20municipalities,
00:11:22uh, the situation will not be good.
00:11:25Because there are also volunteer fire departments operating
00:11:28in municipalities and cities, they play a large role in
00:11:32preventing and extinguishing forest and
00:11:36agricultural fires, and
00:11:39they have no advantage with us, they act voluntarily simply
00:11:42because they love people and nature and want
00:11:46to protect their own
00:11:50We saw that a lot of it comes down to these volunteer fire
00:11:53brigades. On social media there was also
00:11:57a story about a 21-year-old girl, Lara Gvozden,
00:12:01who is mentioned as having participated as a minor with her father,
00:12:04so somehow family traditions are in question
00:12:07when opting for this
00:12:10type of humane calling, but it cannot just
00:12:14be reduced to volunteer fire
00:12:16departments. That's right, Lara
00:12:20Gvozden, she's a member of the volunteer fire department,
00:12:23Svetlana Lištan, and she acted as a child. I
00:12:27know her personally, but also, once she became
00:12:31an adult, she actively participated in these
00:12:34larger fires that were active in Bosansko
00:12:37Grahovo and now the one that was in the area of
00:12:40Dimere, Poliš village, Lištani, Rujani,
00:12:43Prazlija, truly an exceptional person, not just
00:12:46her, but all the members of both volunteer societies
00:12:50that operate in the city area, meaning the volunteer fire department,
00:12:54Vidoške and Svetlana Lištani. But I want
00:12:56to emphasize that a way must be found to financially
00:13:00help these volunteer fire departments and also solve
00:13:03the issue
00:13:05of professional firefighters, improve the military
00:13:09park, the premises where they are on duty
00:13:11and reside,
00:13:14and we need to focus on education,
00:13:15professional development,
00:13:18and local self-governments alone cannot handle this, and
00:13:22new technologies must be applied. You talk
00:13:26with colleagues from Croatia and Serbia about these new technologies
00:13:30and warnings, and Herzegovina is not
00:13:33the case, I don't know, not only when it comes to familiar, but also other natural
00:13:36or other disasters, we really
00:13:39need to, it's high time to take
00:13:42concrete measures, that's clear,
00:13:46this year, I think, has provided enough warnings, and Bosnia and
00:13:49Herzegovina needs to approach this prevention, although we see, even in European
00:13:53Union countries, well. Uh, it is further advocated that
00:13:57prevention, uh, uh, is important, early
00:14:00detection, uh, I still wanted just one more question
00:14:04related to Deliblatska Peščara and actually to other
00:14:07areas that suffered fires, at
00:14:11some point I mentioned that actually in the Serbian Parliament, while
00:14:14it was still burning in uh Deliblatska
00:14:17Peščara, urgent amendments to the law were made that would
00:14:21enable the re-purposing of this land for other purposes.
00:14:25Mr. Milanović, did you follow that, can we really
00:14:29expect, we saw President Vučić
00:14:32who denied it and said that as long as he is in any position, he will not
00:14:35allow the re-purposing of land
00:14:38in Deliblatska Peščara, but is there, as they say,
00:14:42where there's smoke, there's fire, unfortunately that's
00:14:44how it's said, do you expect such
00:14:48changes?
00:14:50Well, I hope that it will not come to fruition in practice,
00:14:54although... "such an amendment to the law was really not
00:14:58needed at such a moment when we had
00:15:01the biggest fire ever recorded in
00:15:05Serbia so far since records have been kept,
00:15:09so in some
00:15:12countries like Greece and
00:15:15Spain uh the re-purposing
00:15:19of land that has burned in fires is not allowed
00:15:22and that measure lasts for 30 or
00:15:2650 years, something like that should perhaps
00:15:29be introduced here, simply to
00:15:33dispel that doubt. that
00:15:35someone wants to
00:15:38perhaps by burning forests
00:15:41create or open space for other
00:15:44activities for some other uh
00:15:48businesses that would later be carried out there, right? The accusations are certainly serious,
00:15:51and we won't talk a priori now, but these
00:15:55are the facts we present, that this law, or rather the amendments to the law, were adopted
00:15:59at that time in the Serbian Parliament, of course, the opposition had its
00:16:03reasons why it commented on it that way, but the expert
00:16:06public. in the first place was not even informed about it, we'll see
00:16:10what happens next, Mr. Tucaković, when it comes
00:16:14to Croatia, uh
00:16:16burned areas, what about them?
00:16:20Well, first of all, I can thank all those who helped in the first
00:16:24days, especially Miša, to help with the remediation, to remove
00:16:27those vehicles, so all those communal enterprises in the burned areas
00:16:31of course need to clean those areas,
00:16:34meaning Croatian Forests, so all of them proceeded to
00:16:38remove fallen trees and so on, that's now the positive thing that happened, so
00:16:41that all that is cleared, of course we need to renew, so
00:16:45the forests, so we can't leave that to chance again, for Aleppo
00:16:49pines to grow only by themselves and then again we have a new
00:16:53problem in five years, a new
00:16:56cover that will burn again very quickly, so
00:17:00we need to approach this truly professionally, and I would really leave this
00:17:03to the experts, those foresters who must answer
00:17:06such questions, what to do, we have time,
00:17:10we have experience now in all of this, and let's try to
00:17:13solve it, so we need to leave it to expert
00:17:17people, yes, that's when it comes to the forest and what will be planted and so on, but I didn't
00:17:20just ask you that, but you heard what is happening in Serbia, that the
00:17:24land is simply being re-purposed into something. There is, yes, that can be done very
00:17:28easily, through legal solutions, so with burnt land, so I think
00:17:32we even have it resolved that it is impossible to do anything there for the next 10 years, that can
00:17:35be done. It can be resolved with different legal
00:17:39solutions, and so we need to make a story about that, not that someone
00:17:43burns it and then has building land, which is pointless, it makes
00:17:46no sense, but simply we need to protect nature from
00:17:49construction, from concreting and all that is happening, so we are at the end of the
00:17:53show, just briefly, you heard the association "I Love Omiš"
00:17:57officially requested from six competent
00:18:00institutions to determine who made the decision not
00:18:04to use this warning system that we have already
00:18:07talked about, you heard that. Yes, yes, yes, we received
00:18:10that inquiry, the response is being prepared for that
00:18:14association. Yes, well, we'll see what the result is. Briefly,
00:18:17the question we mentioned, more prevention, less operational, how can that happen?
00:18:21In Serbia, briefly only.
00:18:24Well, more investment is needed in uh, controlling
00:18:28combustible material, meaning preventing the accumulation of combustible
00:18:32material, which can be solved in several ways, first of all
00:18:35my colleagues, foresters, must... that these measures that will reduce
00:18:39the risk of fire should be more incorporated
00:18:43into forest management plans, on one hand, on
00:18:46the other hand, we need to think about changing the legal
00:18:49regulations that would allow the use
00:18:52of so-called preventive burning out of season,
00:18:55mhm, in order to reduce the accumulation of
00:18:59combustible material and reduce the likelihood of these large
00:19:02fires that can cause great damage, well, when it comes to Bosnia and Herzegovina,
00:19:06in one sentence. And the same question, so, more
00:19:10prevention, less operational, how is that in your case, briefly only.
00:19:13Well, in the same way in the area, well, for the city
00:19:17there is also a large forest area, we have
00:19:20frequent large forest fires on Dinara
00:19:23and funds must be found
00:19:26for building fire roads, clearings, also
00:19:30forest farms that operate there, must
00:19:34have their trained people on the other
00:19:38hand, fire detection, but also, we have
00:19:41the awareness of the older population, these
00:19:44shepherds who, because we have large, large limestone
00:19:47fields, rough areas, then they
00:19:50use old methods of clearing their meadows, so
00:19:54that is the human factor that is also something to consider, that's right, that's
00:19:57right, which is almost 95%, if not more is
00:20:01a factor, are caused by the human
00:20:04factor, we need to go for change.
00:20:07and a different way of thinking about the harmfulness of burning
00:20:10agricultural land and
00:20:13reducers
00:20:18And literally, uh, Mr. Tucaković, for the end, it was your
00:20:22sentence that I quoted several times, yes, that's my
00:20:25sentence, meaning more prevention, less operational, so investment
00:20:28in prevention, not only these roads but also through legal
00:20:32solutions, more institutions, so the forest
00:20:35law, the agricultural land law, the fire protection law,
00:20:39so several laws need to be harmonized and
00:20:42applied, but also controlled, whether they are
00:20:47paper. Thank you very much for being guests on tonight's
00:20:51show. Well, I think we somehow tried to determine whether it is
00:20:54possible to have more prevention, less operational, it seems
00:20:58it's not impossible, but that the human factor is important, that
00:21:01prevention could be controlled, i.e. applied
00:21:05from kindergartens onwards through schools, so that people
00:21:09are educated, first children and then older people, on how to
00:21:12protect themselves from forest fires which are spreading
00:21:15across the region this year, unfortunately. Thank you for being
00:21:18with us. See you next Friday at the same time. Good night.