If you have had messages from neighbours about the smell of burning, or you are watching the haze over Split on a webcam from a thousand kilometres away, the short answer is this: the smoke is coming from across the border, and it is not a sign that anything near your house is on fire.
That is worth saying plainly, because the first assumption is usually the worst one.
Where it is coming from
A large complex of wildfires has been burning since around 4 September in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the area between Kupres, Tomislavgrad and Prozor-Rama, with further fires reported near Konjic. Strong wind, the bura among it, has carried the smoke over the mountains and out across the coast.
The haze has reached a wide stretch: from Imotski through Split, Šibenik and the islands, Brač and Hvar among them, down as far as the Pelješac peninsula and the Dubrovnik area. Croatian fire services have said repeatedly that no significant local fire is behind it. The smell and the poor visibility are drifting in from outside the country.
The one local fire, and why it is a different matter
There was a real fire near Šibenik, and it is worth separating from the haze.
On 4 September an open-space fire started around Perković and Slivno, inland from the town. It burned roughly 140 to 145 hectares of grass, low vegetation and pine forest before it was localised on 6 September. Canadairs and Air Tractors were used, and crews have been damping down and watching the site since. On 5 and 6 September it made the air genuinely bad in parts of Šibenik, Brodarica, Vidici and Šubićevac in particular.
That fire is out. The smoke over Šibenik now is the Bosnian smoke like everywhere else on this coast. If your property is within a few kilometres of Perković or Slivno, the relevant article is not this one but the one we wrote after the fire near Omiš, which covers documentation and insurance deadlines. For everyone else, read on.
What smoke actually does to a building
Very little, and this is the part worth being honest about. A house does not care about smoke the way a person does. There is no structural risk, nothing catches, and there is no reason to send anyone to your property because the sky is orange.
What smoke does is leave things behind, and that is a cleaning question rather than an emergency.
A film on every outdoor surface. Fine ash settles on terraces, glass, railings, garden furniture and pool covers. On its own it rinses off. Left through the first rain it turns into a grey streak that has to be scrubbed, and on light stone it can stain if it sits for weeks.
The pool takes the most of it. Ash on the water loads the filter far faster than usual, and the organic material it carries pulls the chlorine down. A pool that is normally stable for a week can drift in two or three days while this lasts. If nobody is testing it, the visible result is cloudy water, and the invisible one is a filter running at a pressure it should not.
Air conditioning pulls it in. Outdoor condensers clog with fine particulate, and indoor filters load up. Running the units through heavy smoke means the filters need looking at sooner than the service interval says.
Textiles hold the smell. This is the one that catches out owners who are away. If the windows were open when the smoke came over, and nobody closed them, the smell settles into curtains, upholstery and bedding, and it does not leave on its own. Airing the place out for an afternoon in October does not fix it.
None of that is urgent. All of it is cheaper to deal with now than in May.
If the house is let right now
Then it stops being a cleaning question and becomes a guest question. Two things are worth doing.
Tell arriving guests what it is before they ask. Someone who lands in Split, smells burning and sees haze over the hills will assume there is a fire nearby, and a message that explains where the smoke is from is worth more than a good review afterwards.
Second, keep the property closed up during the worst of it and say so. A guest who finds the windows shut and the air conditioning running usually understands why, and it saves the house smelling of smoke for the next arrival.
Air quality, and the limits of what we can tell you
Measurements in Split-Dalmatia County have shown PM10 and PM2.5 several times above normal, with Split reaching the red category on the official Croatian air quality map at times. On the EU scale of one to six, readings have been around two to three. That is elevated, and it is below the point at which authorities tell people to stay indoors.
Health officials have advised extra care for children, older people, pregnant women, and anyone with asthma, COPD, heart or circulatory conditions or allergies. The advice is the usual one: less time outside, no strenuous exercise, windows shut through the heavy spells, and see a doctor if your eyes or throat are irritated or breathing gets difficult.
We are a property care company, not doctors, and that is the whole of what we will say about health. For your own area, the official air quality map is the source worth checking rather than anything we would summarise for you.
How long this lasts
Nobody can give you a date. It depends on the wind and on how the fires in Bosnia develop. As long as they burn strongly and the wind keeps pushing towards the Adriatic, the coast will get repeated episodes of haze rather than one that clears and stays cleared. Expect it to come and go with the weather.
What is worth asking for
If your property is empty and you have somebody looking after it, the useful requests during a spell like this are small and specific.
Ask for the windows to be checked and closed. Ask for the pool to be tested more often than the plan says, and for the filter pressure to be written down. Ask for photographs of the terraces, so you can see whether the ash is a rinse or a scrub. That is the whole list.
If nobody is going past your house at the moment, this is a good week to notice that. Not because the smoke will damage anything, but because the same absence is what turns a jammed window or an open skylight into a problem later, and a spell like this is the kind of thing that makes it visible.
Our inspection visits and pool care cover exactly this sort of thing, and if you are not sure whether your property needs a visit this week, ask us and we will tell you honestly whether it does.