Omis Wildfire Victim Identified as Dragana Antesevic
Police in Split-Dalmatia County confirmed the wildfire near Omis killed Dragana Antesevic, a Bosnian citizen from Kotor Varos who was working there as a seasonal worker.
The wildfire near Omis, covered for two days as a story about evacuated tourists and firefighters battling the bura wind, now has a victim’s name, and that name comes from next door. The Split-Dalmatia County Police confirmed that a body found in the burned area belongs to Dragana Antesevic, a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 34 years old, originally from Kotor Varos, who had been in Omis doing seasonal work. For readers in Serbia and across the region, this is the part of the story that hits closest to home: every summer, large numbers of people from this side of the border head to the Adriatic to work or vacation, so news like this reads as news about someone’s own.
Her disappearance was reported on August 13 in Stanici, a village that lay directly in the fire’s path that night. According to information gathered by police, Antesevic was in a car with two other people as the flames closed in, stepped away from the vehicle at one point, and was never seen again. One person from the same car was seriously injured. Her body was found on August 14 around 1:30 p.m. in Mala Luka near Omis, during a search of the burned terrain.
Her family contacted Croatian authorities and provided DNA samples, and her husband traveled to Croatia. Police and members of the Croatian Mountain Rescue Service had been searching the area where she was last seen.
How much land did the fire burn?
A call reporting the fire near Lokva Rogoznica came in on August 13 at 8:15 p.m., and overnight, driven by a strong bura wind, the flames reached the edge of Omis itself. At a session of the Split-Dalmatia County Civil Protection Headquarters, officials gave the first combined figures: about 1,000 hectares burned, with a fire perimeter longer than 20 kilometers.
“The burned area is roughly a thousand hectares, but we have more than 20 kilometers of perimeter that we will now have to guard for days.”
That was how Croatia’s chief fire commander, Slavko Tucakovic, put it. A perimeter that long means the job does not end once the open flame is out. Crews keep patrolling the edges of the burn scar, where smoldering ground can flare into a new fire the moment the wind picks up again.
More than 200 firefighters with 60 vehicles and about 150 police officers worked the scene, backed by units from five counties, four Canadair CL-415 water bombers and three Air Tractors. Two firefighters were seriously hurt, one with an eye injury and the other with a ruptured eardrum.
“We have an exceptionally hard night behind us, but right now the situation at Lokva Rogoznica is favorable because the fire is not spreading.”
That was Tucakovic’s description of the state of things on August 14, adding that crews were now working the edges of the fire zone and the burned homes.
How many people were injured
Between 36 and 40 people sought help at University Hospital Centre Split. Fourteen were hospitalized, ten of them in intensive care, and seven to eight on ventilators, with burns that in some patients cover up to 70 percent of the body. Three adults and one seventeen-year-old girl were transferred to hospitals in Zagreb.
More than 2,400 people, mostly local residents and foreign tourists, passed through reception centers in Omis, Split and Makarska, where roughly 800 beds, food, water and psychosocial support were made available. The fire reached the settlements of Ivasnjak, Staro Selo, Pod Vajle, Nemira, Stanici and Medici, destroying houses, cars and boats.
The cause is still being determined
The session of the Civil Protection Headquarters in Omis was attended by Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, ministers Tomo Medved, Davor Bozinovic, Irena Hrstic and David Vlajcic, Tucakovic, County Prefect Blazenko Boban and the mayor of Omis, Zvonko Mocic. Police have opened a criminal investigation into the cause of the fire. It is known that there was no thunderstorm and no downed power line in the area on the night the fire started.
Boban urged residents to stay cautious because of the high temperatures. “Let’s be responsible toward ourselves, toward our neighbors, toward our tourists,” the county prefect said.
The 72nd Split Summer festival has been postponed, and the City of Vukovar has approved financial aid for the City of Omis. On Friday evening, a new fire broke out above the village of Brbinj on the island of Dugi Otok, drawing 15 vehicles dispatched from Zadar. The full extent of the damage in the Omis area will only be known once inspectors have assessed the entire burned area.
