2007 Croatian coast fires

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The 2007 Croatian coast fires (Croatian: Požari u Hrvatskoj 2007) were a series of fires that struck the Croatian coast in the summer of 2007. 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.^[1]

There were 750 fires on the coast from 1 June to 8 August. They burned in Istria County, Zadar County, Šibenik-Knin County, Split-Dalmatia County and Dubrovnik-Neretva County. The total burned area covered 159,000 hectares.

The police indicted 18 persons and arrested 12 for arson. Those arrested included an unnamed 56-year-old suspected of setting seven fires and some shepherds who burned grass for sheep.^[2] When fires broke out in the region of Dubrovnik, the local authorities accused the Herzegovinian town of Trebinje of deliberately setting fires. 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.^[4]