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Agios Vasileios fire, July 2022 Άγιος Βασίλειος · Agios Vasileios

Out · last detection 16 Jul 2022, 12:23 UTC

The fire started on 15 July 2022 in Agios Vasileios, Greece, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,339 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2th largest in Crete since 2016 (of 25 with a page). Number 4 in Greece in 2022, of 29.

The power measured by the satellite is low (29.8 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…

Suggestions: Agios Vasileios · 2016Agios Vasileios · 2026Agios Vasileios · 2024Amari · 2024

Burnt area
2,339ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
15 Jul 2022 – 16 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
15 Jul
2022
Heat detections
83
in a single hotspot: 30 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
190MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jul16 Jul
16 Jul 2022

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jul 2022 · 277 MW · 53 16 Jul 2022 · 103 MW · 30
15 Jul 16 Jul

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

27°high
106km/h · peak gust
35%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 663 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (23 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Agios Vasileios Άγιος Βασίλειος where it started
    2,325 ha reached on 15 Jul
    6.6 %

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

  • Agricultural areas56 %
  • Other natural land28 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub16 %
  • Artificial surfaces0.5 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 1 %

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)
15 Jul 26.6 °C 37 % 106 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Jul 27.1 °C 35 % 89 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Jul after 29.3 °C 25 % 97 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Jul after 26.3 °C 37 % 125 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
19 Jul after 23.7 °C 43 % 113 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Jul after 24.5 °C 52 % 80 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Jul after 26.3 °C 34 % 77 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Jul after 30.2 °C 18 % 82 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Jul after 29.7 °C 20 % 78 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Jul after 31.3 °C 16 % 82 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
25 Jul after 32.1 °C 25 % 82 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
26 Jul after 30.2 °C 37 % 85 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 8 Jul 2022
After · 23 Jul 2022

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 · Copernicus

On 17 July 2022 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak19 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1032 µg/m³
13141516171819
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 83Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Greece ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Agios Vasileios fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 15 July 2022 and 16 July 2022: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,339 hectares (23.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Agios Vasileios (2,325 ha, 6.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 27.1 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 106 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Greece (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 · 199 · 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.

RSS Changes to this page

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
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112 · 199.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 83 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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 ADM3 (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication). 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.