Skip to content
worldfires
en
CY · Cyprus · →

Akanthou fire, June 2022 Akanthou, Mandres, Flamoudi

Out · last measured on 24 Jun 2022

The fire started on 21 June 2022 in Akanthou, Cyprus, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,793 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 5 municipalities.

The largest in Cyprus in 2022, of 2.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Epicho · 2020

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
1,793ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
21 Jun 2022 – 24 Jun 2022
Municipalities hit
5
municipalities
Started on
21 Jun
2022
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

34°high
44km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 25 Jun.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (18 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. Akanthou where it started
    859 ha
    11 %
  2. Mandres Μάντρες Τρικώμου 354 inhabitants · 0.5 km from the centre
    646 ha
    36 %
  3. Flamoudi Φλαμούδι 247 inhabitants · 1.9 km from the centre
    172 ha
    8.3 %
  4. Agios Andronikos Trikomou Άγιος Ανδρόνικος/Τοπτσούκιοϊ 319 inhabitants · 2.7 km from the centre
    116 ha
    6.5 %
  5. Ardana Άρδανα 412 inhabitants · 2.7 km from the centre
    4 ha
    0.2 %

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

  • Coniferous forest42 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland28 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub28 %
  • Agricultural areas1.7 %

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 Jun 27.6 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.4 mm High 28
22 Jun 30.2 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Jun 31.9 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Jun 34.3 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 42
25 Jun after 28.7 °C 24 % 46 km/h 1.7 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Jun 2022
After · 1 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 24 June 2022 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak27 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1033 µg/m³
192021222324252627
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Cyprus ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Akanthou fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 21 June 2022 and 24 June 2022: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,793 hectares (17.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 5 municipalities: Akanthou (859 ha, 11 %); Mandres (646 ha, 36 %); Flamoudi (172 ha, 8.3 %); Agios Andronikos Trikomou (116 ha, 6.5 %); Ardana (4 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 0.5 km of the centre of Mandres, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 44 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 Cyprus (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 · 1407 · 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 · 1407.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported). 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.