Split Prosecutors Seek Camera Footage From Omis Wildfire
Split's county prosecutor's office has inspected the wildfire site near Omis and ordered surveillance footage seized from the whole area. Initial damage count: 58 houses, 36 vehicles, 25 boats.
The Split County State Attorney’s Office has opened an investigation into the cause of the wildfire near Omis and ordered the seizure of footage from every surveillance camera found across the fire affected area. For Serbia this is not a distant story, since it concerns a stretch of the Adriatic coast where large numbers of Serbian tourists spend their summer holidays every August, and the Embassy of the Republic of Serbia in Zagreb has stated that no Serbian citizens are among the injured.
The fire broke out on August 13 around 8 p.m. in a wooded area beside the road near Lokva Rogoznica, then spread overnight, driven by wind, over the hills toward Omis. The fire line stretched about 23 kilometers long and a kilometer and a half wide, burning roughly 1,000 hectares.
One person died, their body found at the fire site around 1:30 p.m., in Mala Luka in the Stanici area. The Split County State Attorney’s Office also reports 38 injured, ten of whom remain hospitalized in serious condition. We previously reported on the victim’s identity, when Croatian media published the name Dragana Antesevic, though formal confirmation still awaits an autopsy.
What Investigators Are Collecting From the Fire Site
The on-site inspection was led by the on-duty deputy county state attorney in Split, working with officers from the Split-Dalmatia Police Department and fire and explosion prevention inspectors. Investigators ordered:
- seizure of footage from every surveillance camera found across the fire area
- filming of the entire burned area and photographing destroyed buildings and vehicles
- an autopsy and DNA analysis to establish the cause of death and confirm the victim’s identity
The inspection continued on August 15 at the spot where the fire started, with forensic chemists and physicists from the Ivan Vucetic Forensic Science Center in Zagreb taking material samples. The prosecutor’s office has announced further forensic work, with no deadline set for determining the cause.
How Much Property Was Destroyed?
The first tally released by county authorities lists 58 houses, two garages, 36 vehicles, 25 boats, two trailers, one motorcycle and two trucks. Along with houses and vacation homes, olive groves and farmland above Omis also burned, properties that take years to rebuild, not a single season.
The Croatian Red Cross has provided shelter for about 2,400 people, roughly 1,500 of them at a reception center in Omis and 321 at the Gripe hall in Split. The Adriatic Highway was temporarily closed and has since reopened to traffic. Overnight, 157 firefighters and 44 fire trucks worked the scene, with around a hundred firefighters remaining at the site afterward.
Local residents waited out the fire in a line of cars on the road to Omis, unable to return home.
I cried because I thought I no longer had a mother.
That is how Natasa Vajmia Kraljevic, a resident of the fire affected area, described the moment her mother stopped answering her messages.
Were Any Serbian Citizens Injured?
No, according to a statement from the Embassy of the Republic of Serbia in Zagreb, which said that “based on the Embassy’s information, no citizens of the Republic of Serbia are among those injured in the fire.” The Embassy said it remains in constant contact with the relevant Croatian institutions and will continue to follow the situation.
The Split investigation is running alongside separate cases elsewhere on the coast. In the Zadar area, police arrested four people on suspicion of arson, a case unrelated to the one near Omis. The cause of the Omis fire has not yet been determined, and the next step is the findings of the forensic chemists and physicists.
