An extensive forest floor fire on an area of four soccer fields kept more than 100 firefighters close to Herrsching on Tuesday afternoon. The cause of the fire is still unclear. The risk of forest and wildfire increases with the temperatures in the district.
Herrsching - These missions are rare: More than 100 volunteer fire brigades from the Starnberg district were called to a forest fire on the state road between Herrsching and Breitbrunn at around 4 p.m. on Tuesday. The fire had spread over 20,000 square meters towards Ried, east of the street, but mostly remained on the ground.
However, the deletion was not easy. "We could not take the fire water out of the Ammersee," explains Bauch. The lake was too far away. It would have taken an hour and a half for a line to be set up from there. The emergency services were lucky, because there is a hydrant in the forest of the Ried district. Since the alarm plan for a forest fire also had the two large TLF 4000 tankers from Gilching and Söcking in the loop, there was enough fire-fighting water at the end so that the fire could be brought under control quickly.
In the end, the extinguishing work turned out to be more complex than the fire itself. "It is quite rough terrain up the hill," explains Bauch. In addition, there has been no precipitation for a long time, the soil is dry. Embers' nests could still be hidden between tree trunks and thickets. Therefore, a police helicopter with a thermal imaging camera was also used.
At the time of the initial alarm, it was assumed that the fire was blazing in the Breitbrunner hallway, but it was raging in the Herrschinger hallway. And not too little. Breitbrunn's commandant Florian Kleber could not remember a similarly large fire in the western district. Bauch felt like she was put back in the forest fire series in the Würmtal nine years ago. "There had been similarly large areas burning." Back then it was definitely arson, but the culprit was never found. On the cause of the fire yesterday, Bauch can only say: "No idea."
The state road between Herrsching and Breitbrunn was closed for several hours. Firefighters from Herrsching, Breitbrunn, Gilching, Söcking, Inning, Hechendorf, Oberpfaffenhofen, Hochstadt and Tutzing as well as members of the district fire inspection were deployed.
The risk of forest fires in the Starnberg district has risen slightly in recent days. According to the German Weather Service (DWD), level 3 of 5 is currently valid. Level 4 is expected in parts of Upper Bavaria on Thursday and Friday; a reduction in the risk of fire is currently not foreseeable. The risk of fire for grasslands, i.e. free areas, is specified with level 4 of 5. That remains the case in the future.