Author(s)

D. Stipaničev, Z. Španjol, M. Vučetić, V. Vučetić, R. Rosavec & Lj. Bodrozić

Abstract

The biggest fire-fighting accident in the history of fire-fighting in Croatia happened on August 30th 2007. The routine fire-fighting operation ended with 12 dead and one badly injured fire-fighter. In order to understand the Kornati accident the research team was formed and independent scientific investigation performed. The accident was analyzed from meteorological, vegetation, thermodynamics and aerodynamic points of view, and several simulation models of fire propagation were used. The aim of this paper is not only to give introduction to the Kornati accident, describing the input data used in our other Kornati accident analyses, but also to encourage other researchers to perform their own, independent research trying to find the right answer to the question – What could have happened on Kornati island on August 30th 2007 between 11:30 and 16:00 hrs? We would like to emphasize that our work on the Kornati accident was dedicated to the Kornati accident victims (A. Crvelin, I. Crvelin, T. Crvelin, A. Juričev, D. Klarić, M. Knežević, J. Lučić, I. Marinović, K. Severdija, G. Skočić, M. Stančić and H. Strikoman) in order to find possible explanations and to prevent similar accidents in the future. We hope that the firefighting service in Croatia will be further improved and that in the future we will be able to predict such dangerous situations. Keywords: forest fire accident, vegetation, meteorology, terrain.

Keywords

forest fire accident, vegetation, meteorology, terrain.