Acri fire, August 2021 Acri
The fire started on 3 August 2021 in Acri, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 649 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 4th largest in Cosenza since 2016 (of 145 with a page). Number 39 in Italy in 2021, of 291.
The power measured by the satellite is low (13.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 649ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 4days
- 3 Aug 2021 – 6 Aug 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 3 Aug
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 22
- in a single hotspot: 13 MW
- Danger at start
- 30
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 61MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 21 ha in 2019.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Rome boundary: geoBoundaries · ISTAT, National Institute of Statistics (CC BY 3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
650 ha reached on 5 Aug3.3 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
What burned
- Broadleaved forest32 %
- Other natural land22 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland21 %
- Agricultural areas17 %
- Mixed forest7.1 %
- Artificial surfaces0.8 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
The weather day by day
ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Aug | 29.5 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 4 Aug | 33.1 °C | 22 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 5 Aug | 28.0 °C | 29 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 6 Aug | 24.8 °C | 52 % | 61 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 7 Aug after | 27.9 °C | 37 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 8 Aug after | 32.4 °C | 28 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 9 Aug after | 33.5 °C | 26 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 10 Aug after | 34.2 °C | 22 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 11 Aug after | 33.1 °C | 21 % | 34 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 40 |
| 12 Aug after | 29.1 °C | 40 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 13 Aug after | 30.1 °C | 29 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 14 Aug after | 28.8 °C | 35 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 15 Aug after | 29.7 °C | 27 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 16 Aug after | 30.6 °C | 34 % | 26 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 32 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 4 August 2021 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 22Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,251 haRose3 August 2017 · 9 days · 12 km away
- 2,241 haLongobuccoJuly 2017 · 19 days · 13 km away
- 336 haSan Demetrio CoroneAugust 2021 · 7 days · 17 km away
- 498 haLongobucco8 August 2021 · 6 days · 23 km away
- 353 haMongrassano12 July 2017 · 2 days · 26 km away
- 337 haSan FiliJuly 2017 · 4 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Acri fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 3 August 2021 and 6 August 2021: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 649 hectares (6.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Acri (650 ha, 3.3 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Acri and came within 1.4 km of its centre. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Italy (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
Where to verify it
A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.
Emergency number: 112 · 1515 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
Does something look wrong on this page?
This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 22 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM4 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.