Sarajevo’s Firefighters Recall a City in Flames

August marks 24 years since one of the most terrible months for Sarajevo’s firefighters, when the Vijecnica (City Hall), as well as an art gallery next to the Army House military headquarters in the city centre, went up in flames and nine of their colleagues were injured.

During the siege of Sarajevo that lasted from 1992 to 1995, eight firefighters were killed and 57 were injured while extinguishing blazes, while they were exposed to shelling and sniper attacks on a daily basis.

According to the Sarajevo Canton Fire Brigade, an average team of 10 firefighters had to deal with 1,700 fires over a year and a half at the beginning of the siege. The brigade says that in times of peace, firefighters normally do not get to deal with so many incidents over 32 years of service.

Ismet Tucak, the commander of the Sarajevo Canton Fire Brigade, said the burning of the Vijecnica was the most difficult experience for him, as he felt he was incapable of saving this symbol of the city.

“Grenades were falling. We had no water… Everything was on fire. The dome, the hall, everything was burnt,” Tucak recalled.

“Material was falling from above, but I could do nothing… We could not approach it from the other side because snipers would kill us,” he said.

The Town Hall went up in flames in late August 1992 after the city had been shelled from positions held by Bosnian Serb forces.

One of the nine firefighters who were wounded while extinguishing the fire in the Gallery the same month was Admir Begovic.

After taking his injured colleagues to hospital, he noticed he had been hit in the leg as well.

“As the fire broke out in that gallery, we went there to try to extinguish it. But, grenades began falling one after the other. I was wounded while we were in the attic,” Begovic said.

“I thought I had water in my boot. However, when I took my boot off, I noticed it was full of blood… A shrapnel piece was nailed into my shinbone. It caused a lot of damage to my muscles as well,” he added.

Begovic said that even today, when he passes by the Army House, he looks up to the roof where he was when he saw his wounded colleagues and blood all around them.

The most horrible year

Omer Setic, the deputy commander of the Sarajevo Canton Fire Brigade, said that the most difficult call-outs came in 1992.

“Whatever could have been set on fire, all the things of importance, had been burned by the end of that year. Those buildings included hotels, the Zetra hall, the Electrical Utility building, a part of the Military Hospital. The few buildings that remained unburned were finished off in 1993,” Setic said.

At the beginning of the war, the fire brigade had 30 people, he recalled, and on several occasions some of the firefighters did not go home for five days in a row because they were so busy.

He said that the brigade’s fire engines sometimes returned peppered with holes after call-outs.

“The holes were made by shrapnel pieces and bullets. After extinguishing fires, vehicles would come back with flat tyres… In some cases they even had to leave the vehicles at a certain location. Auto mechanics would then go there at night in order to repair the vehicles and return them to the base,” Setic recalled.

He said that the firefighters who worked through the siege had experiences that few others could imagine.

“The interventions they made during the war are something that you could never experience in times of peace even if you lived for a hundred years,” he explained.

As well as putting out blazes and providing Sarajevans with water, firefighters also saved people who were stuck in buildings that were on fire or damaged by shelling.

Tucak remembers evacuating a two-year old boy and his sister from the rubble after a grenade had hit their house and killed their parents and other family members.

He said his life meant nothing to him at the moment when he heard children’s voices beneath the ruins.

“Only a fool would have entered the place… A cement [roof] panel was hanging down against a wall. Making a small mistake, moving a breezeblock could have killed you,” he recalled.

“I literally lifted up the door with my head and pushed a building block underneath it. Then I saw a little blond boy. He was foaming at the mouth. I tried to pull him out, but I couldn’t because his legs were underneath something. I was afraid I would dislocate his hips. So I pushed the door with my head a bit further so I could to release his hips. Then I slowly pulled him out… He was breathing,” he said.

After having saved the boy, Tucak managed to rescue his six-year old sister, who was unconscious.

“I love this job because God enabled me to do something like that,” he said.