Lokva Rogoznica Fire: Locals Stay to Guard Homes
Goran Lovic, owner of a cafe below the burned forest, says the wildfire in Lokva Rogoznica was set on purpose. He says about thirty locals stayed to guard homes and took shelter on the beaches.
The wildfire in Lokva Rogoznica near Omis broke out around 20:21 next to the Adriatic Highway, in the forest above the road, on the stretch that is the only coastal link between Split and Makarska and that in mid August also carries travelers from Serbia. While firefighters defended homes, the first named eyewitnesses described the hour before the evacuation, and one of them, the owner of a cafe above which the fire flared up, offered his own account of how it started.
Goran Lovic, owner of the Morska Vila cafe below the burned area, spoke to Jutarnji list that night. His place stands right on the highway, near the beach, and the flames, he says, appeared a little above it, past the road, where the forest begins.
“Everything went up in a second. Suddenly there was open flame in a part of the forest where there are no houses. It was deliberate, because how else would a fire start on its own in the forest?”
This is Lovic’s claim alone, and so far there is no confirmation of it. The cause of the fire has not been established, no findings have been published, and until that changes it remains the account of a man who stood beneath the flames, not the conclusion of an investigation.
Why the cafe owner suspects the fire was set
No official service notified Lovic about the fire, his wife did. He was on his way to a Hajduk match when she called.
“I was on my way to the Hajduk match when my wife, who saw it all, called to tell me it was burning above the cafe at 20:23. We rushed back to Lokva.”
Two minutes passed between the fire breaking out and that call. Lovic spoke with reporters around 23:40, three hours later, and was still out on the ground with other locals at that point. He described the fire as a wall moving from the sea, across the road, and up the hill.
That is when he gave the detail that sets this conversation apart from every official statement issued that night: not everyone left.
“There are still some of us locals here, we stayed to guard the houses. All the tourists fled, and good for them. About thirty of us locals are left on the beaches.”
From the sea that evening the whole fire line above the coast was visible.
According to him, the adults are not afraid because they have experience with fires in the area. The children were scared.
Waiter at Morska Vila: guests smelled the smoke first
Slavko Kovacic, from Stanici near Omis, was working at the Morska Vila cafe when the fire broke out. The first sign was not flame but smell, and at first no one inside thought of the forest.
“Guests told me they could smell smoke, we thought it was from the kitchen. When I looked over I saw a huge cloud of smoke. I grabbed a hose to put it out, but the wind picked up and it all took off. I barely saved the car, I jumped in at the last second and kept driving further and further away. Right now my dad is in Stanici saving our house. I hope everything turns out okay.”
Kovacic cut the conversation short: “I have to run. But the most important thing is that everyone survives.” His father was defending the family home in Stanici at that moment, at the other end of the same fire line.
What was happening on the ground
We covered the course of the fire, the closure of the Adriatic Highway and the shelter set up for people at the Ribnjak hall in Omis in a separate article. To follow what Lovic and Kovacic describe, this much is enough: the highway was closed to all traffic on the stretch from Stanici, coming from Split, to Medici, coming from Makarska. Around 150 firefighters were on the ground, every fire brigade from Kastela to Makarska had been deployed, reinforced by crews from Zadar, and four water bombing planes were not expected until morning.
Chief fire commander Slavko Tucakovic sent a message to residents through Croatian Radio-Television (HRT):
“We’re asking residents not to approach the fire, to close their windows, and to put up wet cloths.”
Until dawn, then, only ground crews and the people who chose to stay were on hand. About thirty locals from Lokva Rogoznica waited out the night on the beaches for morning and for the water bombing planes, their houses behind them and the fire above.
