Since late evening on April 24, firefighters worked for almost a day to extinguish the fire in the Biksēres settlement near Madona. The barn, which stored rolls of hay, was completely burned down. It was the dismantling, moving, and soaking of the rolls that required the most effort.
The barn, filled with rolls of hay, belongs to a local farmer, villagers say. The noise of the fire woke up residents of nearby houses, but they could only wait for the rescuers, as the flames had already spread significantly by that time, reports the Degpunktā program (TV3).
"I thought, damn, what are those kids doing on the playground. How long can this go on! I’ll go take a look. When I saw it — everything was on fire, no windows, no doors. I shouted to my husband that everything was burning," a local resident recounts.
That evening, the children in the yard were not noisy, but whether they were involved in the fire is still unknown. Some locals suspect that it was indeed the youth who might have been responsible for what happened. A few years ago, a boy allegedly got hurt in this barn, but no one wants to share the details.
"The little ones probably set it on fire. There was an empty barn; once in the summer, the kids had already set the grass on fire. Someone from prison got out — maybe it was him, or maybe the kids were just fooling around. There was no electricity there," locals say.
Due to the wind, last year's grass burned out over an area of 300 square meters near the barn. Rescuers emphasize that with a different wind direction, the fire could have been much larger.
The commander of the Madona branch of the State Fire and Rescue Service, Zintis Ravinskis, clarified: "Since the number of hay rolls is very large and hay is difficult to extinguish, during the extinguishing from above using equipment, the rolls were taken outside, and the extinguishing work is still ongoing. […] Rolls that have been lying for more than six months usually do not ignite on their own."
