The 2007 Croatian coast fires 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 June 1 to August 8. 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 Bosnian town of Trebinje of deliberately setting fires.
Read more about 2007 Croatian Coast Fires: Fires in Istria, Fires in Dalmatia, Fires Around Dubrovnik, International Accusations of Arson
Famous quotes containing the words coast and/or fires:
“The Boston papers had never told me that there were seals in the harbor. I had always associated these with the Esquimaux and other outlandish people. Yet from the parlor windows all along the coast you may see families of them sporting on the flats. They were as strange to me as the merman would be. Ladies who never walk in the woods, sail over the sea. To go to sea! Why, it is to have the experience of Noah,—to realize the deluge. Every vessel is an ark.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me”
—William Stanley Merwin (b. 1927)