2007 Croatian coast fires

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 the entire Southern and Eastern Europe, the drought and southern wind helped spread the fires all over the Croatian coast, destroying a large part of the fragile plant and animal life.

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

The police indicted 18 persons and arrested 12 persons for arson. Those arrested included an unnamed 56-year-old suspected of setting seven fires and some shepherds who burned grass for sheep. 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, the island of Kornat, 12 firefighters were killed by fast moving brush fires, one was severely injured, and ten were forced to leave before they could extinguish the blaze themselves, which ended up extinguishing itself naturally.