2007 Croatian coast fires

After a heat wave, which covered Southern and Eastern Europe, resulting drought and southern winds helped spread the fires all over the Croatian coast, destroying a large part of vulnerable plant and animal life.

Those arrested included an unnamed 56-year-old suspected of setting seven fires and some shepherds who burned grass for sheep.

Tragedy struck when, of the 23 firefighters sent to a burning island of Kornat, 12 were killed by fast moving brush fires,[3] one was severely injured, and ten were forced to leave before they could extinguish the blaze themselves.

The Croatian Automobile Club reported that the Pula-Premantura county road had to be closed in the section from the Banjole crossroads to Premantura.

The first fire broke out in the afternoon of 26 July, on Veliki Rujan, which is right next to the Paklenica National Park.

The fire was fought by more than 200 firemen, National Park employees and members of the Croatian Army.

On 8 August, a fire broke out around Žitnić, spreading to the mined area along the Šibenik-Drniš state road, which was closed for traffic.

[8] On 30 August, a new fire broke out on the island of Kornat, part of the Kornati National park.

The latter split up one more time when three firemen lost their communication gear, and again when the fourth one went checking for the signal while trying to call his superiors.

In only a minute, six of them were killed instantly, while the other seven remained lying on the ground, badly burned, waiting for help for more than two hours.

Allegedly, the firemen were killed by an unexploded CBU-87 dumped over Kornat by NATO planes returning from the Kosovo War in 1999.

At 10 PM, the sirens sounded the general alarm because the fire came close to the city of Dubrovnik itself.

It prompted some county officials to make arson accusations against the nearby town of Trebinje in the neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina.