Open-air fires around Sremska Mitrovica, September 2026
Fire was everywhere. Where were the inspectors?
Translated from the Serbian version of 26 September 2026. The Serbian text is authoritative: Vatra je bila svuda. Gde su bile inspekcije?
Awaiting reply: Nine freedom of information requests were sent on 23 September 2026.
Next step: the institutions' answers, deadline .
After open-air fires filled the countryside around Sremska Mitrovica with smoke on 18 to 23 September 2026, the author sent nine freedom-of-information requests asking what the institutions recorded about the fires, reports, penalties and air pollution in 2021 to 2026. Replies will be published in full as they arrive.
In brief
According to media reports, from 18 to 23 September 2026 open-air fires spread across the farmland around Sremska Mitrovica: Laćarak, Čalma, Manđelos, Grgurevci, Veliki Radinci and Kuzmin. Mostly stubble and low vegetation burned; the fire reached the cemetery in Čalma and the vineyards above Laćarak, and for days the smoke drifted over the villages, the town and the motorway near Kuzmin.
This was no exception. The Sremska Mitrovica Fire and Rescue Battalion reported that from 1 January to 17 September it had responded to 1,109 fires, 901 of them in the open. Radio-Television of Vojvodina reported on 22 September that there had been more than 200 open-air fires in Srem since the start of September alone.
There is a ban. Burning stubble and crop residues is prohibited by the Law on Fire Protection and the Law on Agricultural Land. The fine for an individual under the Law on Fire Protection is a fixed 10,000 dinars. As early as October 2025 the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management announced that it sees every burned plot on satellite images, and that burning without reporting the fire within seven days puts a farm into passive status in the farm register.
If all this is enforced, the figures should show it. That is why Živko Gvozdenović, the author of this site, sent nine freedom of information requests on 23 September: to the Misdemeanour Court, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Agriculture, the City, the Basic Public Prosecutor's Office, the Provincial Secretariat for Agriculture, the Agrarian Payments Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Institute of Public Health. Each request asks for what that institution keeps, mostly for 2021 to 2026: how many fires were recorded, how many of those who started them were identified, how many charges were filed, how many judgments were handed down and how many fines were collected, and from the Agency and the Institute also air quality measurements.
What next: the legal deadline for the answers expires on . Every answer will be published here in full. An institution that does not answer will face a complaint to the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection.
Key documents
Each document has a permanent number and its own page, in Serbian, with the scan and the file's SHA-256 hash. The titles and lines below are an unofficial translation.
- D40Freedom of information request: Misdemeanour Court in Sremska Mitrovica, UE 12/2026(page in Serbian)
Number of misdemeanour cases for burning stubble under the Law on Fire Protection and the Law on Agricultural Land, who brought them, how they ended (fine, warning, acquittal, statute of limitations) and how many fines were collected, by year, 2021–2026.
- D41Freedom of information request: Ministry of the Interior, Emergency Management Sector and Sremska Mitrovica Police Department, UE 13/2026(page in Serbian)
Number of open-air fire callouts, on-site investigations, identified perpetrators and misdemeanour charges by year, separately for 18–23 September 2026, plus the number of police criminal complaints for causing general danger.
- D42Freedom of information request: Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management (agricultural inspection), UE 14/2026(page in Serbian)
Number of plots around Sremska Mitrovica where burning was detected by satellite, by cadastral municipality, the number of inspections and charges, the number of farms put into passive status, and copies of orders for targeted inspections.
- D43Freedom of information request: City of Sremska Mitrovica, UE 15/2026(page in Serbian)
Whether the field-guard service under the City's 2014 decision ever existed and who ran it, what the municipal police and inspectors did, the minutes of the City Emergency Management Headquarters, and whether the announced decision on drones exists on paper.
- D44Freedom of information request: Basic Public Prosecutor's Office in Sremska Mitrovica, UE 16/2026(page in Serbian)
Number of criminal complaints for causing general danger (Article 278 of the Criminal Code) over open-air fires, who filed them and how they ended, and whether any case was opened over the September fires.
- D45Freedom of information request: Provincial Secretariat for Agriculture, Water Management and Forestry, UE 17/2026(page in Serbian)
Whether the Secretariat inspects burning, whether it holds data on burned plots in Srem, and whether it has funded any measure against stubble burning in Sremska Mitrovica.
- D46Freedom of information request: Agrarian Payments Administration, UE 18/2026(page in Serbian)
Number of active farms in Sremska Mitrovica against those put into passive status for burning, the amount of subsidies withheld, fire reports in eAgrar, and the internal procedure for the “automatic passive status” the Ministry announced.
- D47Freedom of information request: Environmental Protection Agency, UE 19/2026(page in Serbian)
Hourly and daily PM10 and PM2.5 values from state network stations in and around Sremska Mitrovica for 15–30 September 2026 and for the 2021–2025 harvest seasons, the number of days over the limit, and whether the Agency has ever linked field fires to air pollution in Srem.
- D48Freedom of information request: Institute of Public Health Sremska Mitrovica, UE 20/2026(page in Serbian)
Monthly air quality reports the Institute prepares for the City, daily soot values for 15–30 September 2026, exceedances in the 2021–2025 harvest seasons, and whether the Institute warned anyone during the fires.
Full documentation (in Serbian)
The complete case, with every claim labelled as document, my testimony ormy conclusion, the chronology, all documents and the log of corrections, is on the Serbian case page. Paragraphs there have permanent numbers (¶ 1.14 is the fourteenth paragraph of part one); please cite those. A browser's translate function gives a rough reading; the Serbian wording is what counts.