A total of 9,673 fires were recorded in Croatia in the first six months of 2022, an increase of 34 percent year-on-year, and of that number, 6,890 fires occurred outdoors, an increase of 50 percent, the national firefighting association HVZ said on Monday.

In a press release, the HZV said that the number of fires this year “increased in nearly all categories” and that the burnt area increased by more than 240 percent from last year. HZV did not clarify how many categories they use to classify fires.

The number of fatalities also increased, so the number of fire-related deaths in the observed period went up from 15 in 2021 to 22 in 2022. Also, the number of injured persons went up, from 62 last year to 84 this year.

The number of requests for the engagement of air forces increased by nearly 30 percent, while the number of requests for the engagement of members of national fire intervention units rose by 200 percent.

“The first months of this year saw little precipitation and a lot of wind, which definitely contributed to the increase in the number of fires,” said Chief Fire Commander Slavko Tucakovic. “We are witnessing increasingly extreme climate events, and high temperatures and little precipitation are the cause of a very high forest fire danger index, which has been declared for nearly the entire country,” he added.