The Kornati fire accident – eruptive fire in relatively low fuel load herbaceous fuel conditions

Abstract

The biggest fire fighting accident in the history of Croatia happened on August 30, 2007. The routine fire fighting operation ended with 12 dead and 1 badly injured fire-fighter. That was the biggest human loss in the history of fire fighting in Croatia. In order to understand the Kornati accident a 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. This paper describes in detail one possible explanation connected with eruptive fire behavior. Eruptive fire behavior has been reported in many fire accidents in the past causing a lot of causalities. Based on the real Kornati accident data, the eruptive fire model was conceived and appropriate results derived. The paper describes them in detail. Our aim in studying this and other accidents is not to find who is guilty or to blame anyone but rather to find what happened and to extract lessons, to avoid future accidents.

The Kornati fire accident – aerodynamic and thermodynamic aspects of the accident

“…Thus, our conclusion was that the Rothermel model was not appropriate for the calculation of the rate of spread of the fire in Sipnate canyon. Another possibility is the Viegas eruptive fire model, described in detail in a separate paper [6]. Here, we will only mention that an eruptive fire effect was possible in Sipnate canyon.…”

A volatile organic compounds flammability approach for accelerating forest fires

“…Let us notice that this approach based on two geometrical parameters (the burned area can A and the canyon topology depending on the angle  ) and on the emitted VOCs flammability limits is an explanation for the "lake of fire" observed in the Palasca accident [2] and for the acceleration of the rate of spread in the South Canyon accident. Concerning the Kornati accident, this approach can be considered as an alternative way to the eruptive fire theory developed by Viegas [1] and applied to this accident [7].…”

“…Now, we will apply this formula to three real accidents which occurred in USA (South Canyon accident, 1994), France (Palasca accident, 2000) and in Croatia (Kornati accident, 2007) described respectively by Butler et al [5], Dold et al [2], Viegas et al [7] and Viegas [8]. The canyon characteristic lengths of these accidents are determined using the burned area where the phenomenon happened and the canyon geometry given by Viegas [1] and illustrated in Figure 3.…”

“…In Portugal, more than fifty persons lost their lives since 2003 [10,11]. More recently, the Kornati accident in Croatia in 2007 killed twelve persons [7]. In Greece, also in 2007, more than seventy five persons lost their lives [12].…”

“…There have been many accidents over the last half century where eruptive fires were reported [4][5][6][7][8]. In France, sixteen firefighters were killed during the last fifteen years because of this phenomenon [9].…”