2024-08-05 11:47:43
Volunteers, organized by an IT entrepreneur, saved two residential houses from burning during the big fire near the villages of Ilia and Tsvaritsa, Nevestino municipality. Dimitar Dimitrov leads the group of nine people with his company’s equipment, who “attacked” the fire at the risk of their lives. See Dimitrov’s entire story, which he published on his Facebook profile.
“On the second day of the fire between the villages of Tsarvaritsa and Ilia, we witnessed a human drama that happens in almost every big fire: the fire peaked in the high part and moved quickly towards two lonely houses located by the road before the village of Ilia.
The owner of one house, a young man, ran up to us and excitedly explained that the tongues of fire were moving towards his house and high flames were already visible. At that very moment a stormy wind was blowing and I explained that there was no way we could enter the pine forest against this element. The man looked very unhappy and ran back to the house to warn his wife. We followed him to assess the situation. The slope on the side of these two houses was on the leeward side and the situation was not immediately dangerous, the fire front was about a hundred meters above the two houses and was advancing in line towards them. My colleagues are extremely motivated and wanted us to hit the front in the forest immediately, but the terrain was extremely difficult and a sudden gust of wind would surprise us with top fire and the inability to retreat quickly.
I left my men (eight men) on the road and ran to the woods above the house to assess the situation. Yes, my fears were confirmed: the dry pine forest was burning intensely, tongues of fire were climbing up the pines and in some places reaching all the way to their high crowns. It wasn’t safe to stay there and I started to descend. At the edge of the forest, next to the house itself, people had prepared several buckets of water, an old garden hose could be seen, just a few meters, prepared… These preparations looked absurdly pitiful against the background of the elements. It was as if someone had readied an ax against an approaching tank battalion deployed in battle formation. Helplessness is one of the saddest human conditions. I was walking thoughtfully down, slowly – there was no rush, with my head down, when a woman’s voice from behind the fence woke me from this state:
– Thanks for all you do!
The owner of the house had already heard that I wasn’t going to let my men into the forest and had watched me go to check on the situation. She had probably watched me carefully as I emerged from the underbrush and read from my expression that their house was doomed.
Her words echoed in my head. I have encountered monstrous ingratitude, I could write thousands of pages of stories about ungrateful. Not people, but biological waste. I had just shown that I wasn’t going to save the house, but she had found the strength to thank me for coming to look anyway. I was in a hurry, these words raging inside me and causing an ever stronger resonance. My people were also watching me carefully and waiting for me to pronounce the sentence. I shouted:
– Quick! All available hoses to come here! The cistern (8000 liter cistern located in the center of the village) should go this way! Move the machines and make room for the tanker! To enter the yard, as close as possible to the forest! Get the back sprinklers ready too!
My “infantry” did not wait a second. We carried hundreds of meters of the best quality bushfire hose, carefully prepared on the night between the two battles, each had a radio and coordination was optimal. The tanker arrived just as both lines had reached the fire front in parallel. The powerful pump started and the life fluid filled the hoses. We hit the front with full force and began to liquidate it simultaneously on both flanks. More and more hoses were being moved to both points and work was going fast, and two men with backpack sprayers were working their way through a steadily increasing extinguishment area and extinguishing small resurgent outbreaks.
The battle lasted from 14:40 to 21:00. If you look at this area from the air now, you will see how everything on one side of the road has been destroyed by the fire except for two houses and an “island” of several acres of dense pine forest. And if you think that the force that stopped the element in the middle of this powder keg is nine volunteers, you’d be wrong. Those words stopped her: “Thank you for all you do!”
Our society is a daily witness to an absurd attitude towards doctors, policemen and even firefighters. It happened that everyone was pulling me and shouting “save my house!”. When life hits us with that awful feeling of helplessness, we must realize that we are not stronger than Nature, nor stronger than Death. And we must be humble. Remember the magic words you learned in your childhood and don’t hesitate to say them!”