A wildfire has torn through approximately 20 hectares of forest near Cielimowo in Poland’s Gniezno district, obliterating young trees that had been planted to replace woodlands destroyed by a severe storm in 2017. The blaze, which raged for about eight hours, also forced the closure of National Road No. 15, causing significant disruption.
The fire was reported to local authorities shortly after 1 p.m. yesterday. By 9 p.m., firefighters had managed to bring the blaze under control, though efforts to extinguish lingering hotspots are expected to continue through the night.
At the height of the operation, around 80 firefighters from 20 units across the Gniezno and Września districts, as well as the Poznań Regional Command, were on the scene. Their efforts were bolstered by three Dromader firefighting planes.
Thankfully, no injuries were reported, and no buildings were damaged. Traffic on National Road No. 15 was severely affected but returned to normal around 9 p.m.
“This fire consumed over 20 hectares of forest, an area about 13 times the size of the Katowice Spodek arena, making it the largest fire in recent years within the Poznań Regional Directorate of State Forests. While it’s not on the same scale as the massive fires in Notecka Forest or Kuźnia Raciborska, where thousands of hectares were lost, this fire is still significant because it destroyed saplings that had been planted after the 2017 storm,”
stated the State Forests authorities.
The fire represents a serious setback for reforestation efforts in the area, which had been slowly recovering from the devastation of the 2017 storms.