Kupres: Woman, 71, Admits She Started Wildfire

Police in Kupres have determined that the wildfire that spent days in early September devouring parts of Herzegovina, with smoke from it spreading all the way to the Dalmatian islands, was not an accident. A 71-year-old woman from the village of Zvirnjaca is suspected of causing it, after lighting a fire in her own yard and leaving it unattended for a short time. For a region that every summer and early autumn hosts travelers from Serbia as well, a wildfire like this one on the other side of the border is not a distant story: the smoke that hung over the Adriatic coast for days also affected tourists who were at the seaside at the time.

The report of the fire reached the Kupres Police Station on September 4 at around 2 p.m., after flames were spotted in the area of the village of Zvirnjaca. The on site investigation and criminal inquiry established that the fire had started in the yard of a family home in the village. The woman suspected of causing it was born in 1955, making her 71 years old, and lives in Zvirnjaca; police have carried out a criminal investigation against her.

According to a statement from the Interior Ministry of Herzegbosnia Canton, the suspect, during questioning, “confirmed to police that she had lit a fire in the yard and left it unattended for a short time.” That sentence, according to police, is the key finding of the investigation: left to itself, with strong wind and extremely dry vegetation, the fire raced from the yard into the surrounding open land and from there into the inaccessible mountain terrain of Ljubusa.

How Many Municipalities Did the Fire Affect?

Here the sources differ. The Croatian outlet Index reports that after starting in Zvirnjaca, the fire spread across three municipalities: Kupres, Prozor-Rama and Tomislavgrad. Other sources mention only two affected municipalities. The Bosnian outlet Klix, citing estimates from the field, puts the total burned area at around 150 square kilometers, of which about 40 square kilometers burned in the Tomislavgrad area alone, more than a quarter of the entire scorched surface.

Ground crews, local firefighters, numerous volunteers and heavy machinery took part in the firefighting effort for days. Once the terrain became inaccessible to ground teams, Air Tractor planes were called in, and Croatia joined the effort as well, sending its own Canadair water bombers. Their low passes over Lake Rama, where they scooped up water, marked reports from the fire zone throughout the crisis. Thanks to local roads that served as natural firebreaks, the fire never reached inhabited areas, so there were no injuries and no houses burned.

The smoke raised by the fire was thick enough to be seen from the Dalmatian islands, and air quality across Dalmatia was affected for days, right in the final weeks of summer when the region is still full of tourists. This is not the first time a fire from inland Herzegovina has reached the coast, but few wildfires this season burned for as long or covered as much ground.

The investigation has shown that behind one of the largest wildfires of the season in the wider Herzegovina area was not arson, but plain carelessness with a fire in a yard, at a moment when vegetation was extremely dry and the wind strong enough to carry the flames uncontrollably for kilometers beyond where they were lit. That is why the 71-year-old is not being pursued for deliberately starting a fire, but for negligence, as Kupres police explicitly state in their account of the case.

Once the investigation is complete, the Kupres Police Station will submit a report on the criminal offense to the Cantonal Prosecutor’s Office of Herzegbosnia Canton in Livno, which will decide on the charge of negligently causing a fire. Police have not said when the prosecutor’s office is expected to rule.