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Agios Vasileios fire, 29 July 2026 Άγιος Βασίλειος · Agios Vasileios

Out · last detection 30 Jul 2026, 11:38 UTC

The fire started on 29 July 2026 in Agios Vasileios, Greece, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 5,331 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the largest fire in Crete since 2016 (of 25 with a page). Number 2 in Greece in 2026, of 28.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Agios Vasileios · 2022Agios Vasileios · 2016Agios Vasileios · 2024Amari · 2024

Burnt area
5,331ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
≈ 2days
29 Jul 2026 – 30 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
29 Jul
2026
Heat detections
102
in a single hotspot: 212 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.0GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jul30 Jul
30 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jul 2026 · 1,512 MW · 13 30 Jul 2026 · 556 MW · 89
29 Jul 30 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

29°high
78km/h · peak gust
48%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

50% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,188 ha in 2016, 2,037 ha in 2022, 23 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,667 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (53 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
    5,086 ha reached on 29 Jul
    14 %

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 areas58 %
  • Other natural land27 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub15 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

Checked against the press

Checked on 30 September 2026

We checked this page against 4 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:

Also known as
Κρύα Βρύση · Μελάμπες (Melampes) · Preveli / Agia Galini fire
Official area reported: 5,330 ha (the satellite measured 5,331 ha)

Sources

Official figures are measured differently from satellite ones and sometimes cover only part of the fire.

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)
29 Jul 29.4 °C 48 % 78 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Jul 26.2 °C 58 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
31 Jul after 25.8 °C 62 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
1 Aug after 25.3 °C 69 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
2 Aug after 26.0 °C 67 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
3 Aug after 27.8 °C 60 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
4 Aug after 28.6 °C 51 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
5 Aug after 29.3 °C 44 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
6 Aug after 28.6 °C 56 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
7 Aug after 30.1 °C 47 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
8 Aug after 30.5 °C 46 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Aug after 28.5 °C 51 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 29

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Jul 2026
After · 6 Aug 2026

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 1 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak15 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1037 µg/m³
Optical depth0.37
27282930311
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 · 102Every 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?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (29 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 30 July 2026 (2 days from 29 July 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 5,331 hectares (53.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Agios Vasileios (5,086 ha, 14 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 29.4 °C, humidity dropped to 48 % and gusts hit 78 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class 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.
  • The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 102 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Checked against news and agencies: 4 confirmed sources.
  • 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.