Overview
- About 100 square meters of leaves and brush burned on a steep slope near the Schöne Aussicht shelter on Gera’s Zoitzberg hill.
- Police say youths gathered at the shelter, where grilling is banned, then tossed grill parts and hot ashes down the slope, igniting the brush.
- Wet, steep ground blocked access for fire crews, prompting Germany’s Technical Relief Agency (THW) to recover vehicles that got stuck.
- Firefighters brought the blaze under control in about an hour, preventing it from growing into a larger forest fire.
- Investigators seized the grill and other items as evidence and questioned a 15-year-old and his friends as they assess whether the act was negligent or deliberate.