Agrigento fire, July 2024 Agrigento, Cattolica Eraclea
The fire started on 21 July 2024 in Agrigento, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 575 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 26th largest in Agrigento since 2016 (of 289 with a page). Number 5 in Italy in 2024, of 112.
- Burnt area
- 575ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 21 Jul 2024 – 22 Jul 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 21 Jul
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 5
- in a single hotspot: 45 MW
- Danger at start
- 38
- High · FWI index
- Energy released
- 149MW
- sum of detected power
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 45 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
75% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 80 ha in 2018, 92 ha in 2019, 2 ha in 2020, 25 ha in 2021, 178 ha in 2022, 202 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 431 ha that had burned before.
- 127 ha Agrigento fire, June 2022 203 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 125 ha Agrigento fire, July 2023 240 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 79 ha Cattolica Eraclea fire, July 2018 359 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 27 ha Agrigento fire, July 2023 117 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2 ha Cattolica Eraclea fire, July 2020 146 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1 ha Cattolica Eraclea fire, August 2018 108 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
486 ha reached on 21 Jul2.0 %
-
Cattolica Eraclea 3,300 inhabitants · 4.5 km from the town91 ha1.5 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
What burned
- Other natural land72 %
- Agricultural areas20 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub7.8 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Jul | 34.4 °C | 24 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 22 Jul | 29.5 °C | 40 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 23 Jul after | 31.7 °C | 39 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 24 Jul after | 32.7 °C | 37 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 25 Jul after | 30.9 °C | 34 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 26 Jul after | 30.4 °C | 45 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 27 Jul after | 29.1 °C | 51 % | 28 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 24 |
| 28 Jul after | 30.1 °C | 47 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 29 Jul after | 32.8 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 30 Jul after | 32.6 °C | 37 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 31 Jul after | 32.6 °C | 36 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 1 Aug after | 32.0 °C | 34 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
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 22 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 5Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,370 haCattolica EracleaJune 2025 · 7 days · 3 km away
- 1,563 haCiancianaJuly 2021 · 3 days · 6 km away
- 1,330 haSanta ElisabettaJuly 2026 · 3 days · 7 km away
- 2,265 haBivonaJuly 2026 · 1 day · 16 km away
- 6,516 haCastronovo di Sicilia20 July 2026 · 1 day · 20 km away
- 1,409 haSuteraJuly 2026 · 1 day · 27 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Agrigento fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 21 July 2024 and 22 July 2024: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 575 hectares (5.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Agrigento (486 ha, 2.0 %); Cattolica Eraclea (91 ha, 1.5 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The closest fire to a town centre came within 4.5 km of Cattolica Eraclea. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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
Satellite cross-check
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
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.