At noon 19 minutes, the bells of the church of Petrinja ring as every day for a year, marking the precise moment of the catastrophe. Ross pauses mid-sentence, catching his breath. Her grandson was with her at the time, watching cartoons in another room. She rushed to reassure him but, as the ground moved, struggled to cross the two meters that separated them. A closet collapsed at the sound of a broken window. It was like an eternity. “I will never forget the sight of my grandson’s pale face with the ceiling cracking above his head,” she said.

Ross and his grandson would come out unscathed, and unlike much of the city, his home would escape serious damage. However, an abandoned structure next door would be weakened to the point of threatening her home and so, for the second time in her life, Ross was forced to leave Petrinja. As a young woman in 1991, she fled when the city was invaded by Serbian rebel forces at the start of the wars that destroyed Yugoslavia. She spent four years as a refugee on the outskirts of the Croatian capital, Zagreb, caring for her child while her husband served in the army. “We left with a few things in nylon bags,” she said, recalling the war. “And then, after almost 30 years, a natural disaster like this happens and [once again] we have nowhere to go.

The Croatian army finally expelled Serbian rebel forces in August 1995, dismantling their protostate, the Republic of Krajina, and consolidating control of Zagreb over a belt of territory that included Petrinja. The lightning assault, codenamed Operation Storm, is celebrated as the cornerstone of the founding of the modern Croatian state.

Since then, however, the state has effectively staged a slow withdrawal from the land reclaimed in this dramatic offensive. Investments and development have focused on the capital and the coast, whose tourism sector now accounts for one fifth of Croatia’s GDP. Weakened by war, the economy of the rural interior will continue to decline, along with the agricultural and manufacturing industries that once supported it.

In cities like Petrinja, the workforce has been battered by conflict and migration, leaving behind the elderly and impoverished. While the 2020 earthquake sparked a first wave of official concern, the reconstruction effort has been slow, fueling anger and accusations of abandonment. Far from the shimmering coasts, this is the story of another Croatia, coveted in war and neglected in peace.