Granite avalanche flattened half the village: Waste from the quarry had not been removed for years, torrents moved it and directed it towards houses

By: Istraga.ba

"We warned about the quarry," said a young man from Donja Jablanica who led me through the thicket towards the top of the hill. When we reached the clearing caused by the avalanche, the young man retreated.

"I can't go any further. Those up there are dangerous," he said before disappearing again into the dense undergrowth.

Two hundred meters uphill and the place where stone was extracted is already visible. An avalanche about twenty-odd meters wide crashed directly from the quarry onto the houses in Donja Jablanica. Huge granite pieces are still scattered around, and water from the mountaintop flows between them, creating solid streams. Stone boulders, once separated from large rocks by blasting in the quarry above the village, crashed towards the Sarajevo-Mostar road and flattened everything in their path.

(VIDEO) @IstragaB managed to reach the quarry with suspicious permits where sediment that caused the avalanche that buried several houses in Donja Jablanica was accumulating. At least 14 people have died. Entire families are missing. Surviving residents told us that... pic.twitter.com/INqYQpMlAV

— Istraga.ba (@IstragaB) October 4, 2024

The owner of the quarry is Dženan Honđo. If you see his associates in the photos available on social media, it becomes clear why the locals are afraid.


Honđo with his associates

Honđo has not yet been arrested. Experts are expected to reach the quarry in the coming days to determine whether the extraction was carried out properly and whether the quarry had all the necessary permits to operate.

According to Istraga's information, the "waste" from this quarry had not been removed for years after cutting the stone. And it was precisely this that created sediment after water torrents rushed down from the mountaintop. When the sediment moved, a large stone avalanche headed towards the village and literally flattened everything in its path. The photo shows the path the avalanche took from the quarry to the village.



When the stone avalanche, accompanied by a water torrent, destroyed several houses in Donja Jablanica, a large dam formed under the underpass separating the railway and the road. The water then flowed into the left part of the settlement and began to flood the houses.

"That is the roof of the vakuf house where I lived," says local imam Semir efendija Jahić.


Semir efendija Jahić

The water first flooded the ground floor. The efendija and his family fled to the first floor. But then the first floor was also flooded.

"We managed to grab some empty water bottles and moved to the mosque. We couldn't enter the minaret because half of it was already flooded. Then we climbed onto the dome. We managed to accommodate a few neighbors there.

My wife swam and carried the children on her back to a dry spot. I stayed at the mosque until after dawn because I couldn't swim. The Civil Protection saved me," efendija Jahić recounted.

We cross over the remains of destroyed houses to the part of the village that is still cut off.

"Here, the house of the Tufek family was. We haven't found nine of them. Only one child was found, and is in serious condition," neighbors told us.

The final death toll is still unknown. Because entire families were lost.