Skip to content
worldfires
en
IT · Italy · →

Alcamo fire, July 2023 Alcamo

Out · last detection 18 Jul 2023, 01:23 UTC

The fire started on 16 July 2023 in Alcamo, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 244 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 29th largest in Trapani since 2016 (of 68 with a page). Number 86 in Italy in 2023, of 207.

The power measured by the satellite is low (28.3 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: Custonaci · 2025Custonaci · 2017San Vito Lo Capo · 2020Monreale · 2021

Burnt area
244ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
16 Jul 2023 – 18 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
16 Jul
2023
Heat detections
23
in a single hotspot: 28 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
120MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jul18 Jul
18 Jul 2023

How it evolved, day by day

17 Jul 2023 · 203 MW · 19 18 Jul 2023 · 36 MW · 4
17 Jul 18 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

39°high
40km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 29 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9 ha in 2021.

What happened to each town

  1. Alcamo 44,569 inhabitants · 1.2 km from the centre where it started
    244 ha reached on 17 Jul
    1.9 %

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

  • Other natural land32 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland26 %
  • Mixed forest23 %
  • Agricultural areas18 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 55 %

Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.

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)
16 Jul 37.8 °C 12 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Jul 39.4 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Jul 37.9 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
19 Jul after 39.7 °C 18 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Jul after 39.8 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
21 Jul after 38.8 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Jul after 38.6 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
23 Jul after 39.5 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Jul after 40.7 °C 10 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
25 Jul after 38.5 °C 23 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
26 Jul after 29.7 °C 35 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Jul after 29.9 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Jul after 32.5 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Jul 2023
After · 25 Jul 2023

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 2023 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1048 µg/m³
Optical depth0.39
1415161718192021
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 · 23Every 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 Italy ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Alcamo fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 16 July 2023 and 18 July 2023: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 244 hectares (2.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Alcamo (244 ha, 1.9 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Alcamo and came within 1.2 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 39.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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.

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 · 1515.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 23 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 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.