Altofonte fire, August 2020 Altofonte, Piana degli Albanesi, Monreale
The fire started on 29 August 2020 in Altofonte, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 837 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 26th largest in Palermo since 2016 (of 178 with a page). Number 5 in Italy in 2020, of 140.
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- Burnt area
- 837ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 4days
- 29 Aug 2020 – 1 Sept 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- municipalities
- Started on
- 29 Aug
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 88
- in a single hotspot: 71 MW
- Danger at start
- 38
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 287MW
- detected power per day, on average
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 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 2 Sept.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Rome boundary: geoBoundaries · ISTAT, National Institute of Statistics (CC BY 3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
594 ha reached on 30 Aug17 %
-
Piana degli Albanesi 5,541 inhabitants · 1.1 km from the centre174 ha reached on 30 Aug2.7 %
-
71 ha reached on 30 Aug0.1 %
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 forest81 %
- Agricultural areas16 %
- Artificial surfaces3.0 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 85 %
- ZEPA + LIC Monte Pizzuta, Costa del Carpineto, Moarda ITA020026
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 5.8 hectares of built-up land and about 2,800 residents (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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 Aug | 30.0 °C | 26 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 30 Aug | 32.2 °C | 20 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 31 Aug | 31.0 °C | 19 % | 56 km/h | 1.6 mm | High 34 |
| 1 Sept | 21.6 °C | 42 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 2 Sept after | 23.7 °C | 38 % | 29 km/h | 1.4 mm | Moderate 13 |
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 30 August 2020 the air beside the fire reached 38 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily 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 · 88Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,120 haMonreale29 July 2021 · 3 days · 6 km away
- 1,663 haPalermo21 July 2023 · 7 days · 7 km away
- 3,728 haMonreale24 July 2023 · 3 days · 9 km away
- 2,867 haMonreale29 July 2021 · 4 days · 11 km away
- 1,649 haAltavilla MiliciaJuly 2018 · 2 days · 24 km away
- 2,265 haCampofelice di FitaliaJuly 2026 · 2 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Altofonte fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 29 August 2020 and 1 September 2020: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 837 hectares (8.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Altofonte (594 ha, 17 %); Piana degli Albanesi (174 ha, 2.7 %); Monreale (71 ha, 0.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Altofonte and reached its centre: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.2 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 88 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.