How long did the Reggio di Calabria fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 July 2021 to 3 August 2021 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 July 2021 to 30 July 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,088 hectares (10.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 4 municipalities: Montebello Jonico (670 ha, 12 %); Reggio di Calabria (279 ha, 1.2 %); Motta San Giovanni (134 ha, 2.9 %); Bagaladi (7 ha, 0.2 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire came within 1.9 km of the centre of Montebello Jonico, 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 32.2 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 23 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class 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.

IT · Italy · 2021-07-27 → 2021-08-03

Reggio di Calabria fire, 27 July 2021 Montebello Jonico, Reggio di Calabria, Motta San Giovanni

Out · last detection 2 Aug 2021, 01:28 UTC

The fire started on 27 July 2021 in Reggio di Calabria, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,088 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 6th largest in Reggio di Calabria since 2016 (of 101 with a page). Number 14 in Italy in 2021, of 291.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Reggio di Calabria · 2019 Reggio di Calabria · 2023 Motta San Giovanni · 2023 Reggio di Calabria · 2023

Burnt area: 1,088ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 8days; 27 Jul 2021 – 3 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit: 4; municipalities
Started on: 27 Jul; 2021
Heat detections: 82; in a single hotspot: 80 MW
Danger at start: 18; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 126MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jul3 Aug

Play back 2 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

27 Jul 28 Jul 29 Jul 30 Jul 31 Jul 1 Aug 2 Aug

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

32°high

23km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8 ha in 2017, 60 ha in 2019, 35 ha in 2020.

7 ha Reggio di Calabria fire, July 2019 117 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (11 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

Montebello Jonico 5,697 inhabitants · 1.9 km from the centre

670 ha reached on 31 Jul

12 %
Reggio di Calabria 170,951 inhabitants · 10.3 km from the centre where it started

279 ha reached on 27 Jul

1.2 %
Motta San Giovanni 5,574 inhabitants · 4.4 km from the centre

134 ha reached on 30 Jul

2.9 %
Bagaladi 953 inhabitants · 3.2 km from the centre

7 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

Agricultural areas54 %
Sclerophyllous scrub12 %
Mixed forest11 %
Scrub and transitional woodland8.1 %
Other natural land6.8 %
Broadleaved forest6.5 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 24 %

LIC Monte Embrisi e Monte Torrione IT9350181

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 2020

Built-up area2.1 ha

Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.1 hectares of built-up land and about 100 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	Danger (FWI)
27 Jul	28.3 °C	41 %	23 km/h	Moderate 18
28 Jul	29.4 °C	43 %	18 km/h	Moderate 18
29 Jul	30.9 °C	27 %	23 km/h	High 25
30 Jul	32.2 °C	25 %	23 km/h	High 27
31 Jul	30.1 °C	34 %	29 km/h	High 29
1 Aug	31.8 °C	29 %	31 km/h	High 30
2 Aug	30.4 °C	40 %	37 km/h	High 29
3 Aug	29.9 °C	39 %	34 km/h	High 30
4 Aug after	30.7 °C	33 %	31 km/h	High 28
5 Aug after	27.9 °C	44 %	50 km/h	High 31
6 Aug after	25.0 °C	47 %	46 km/h	High 28
7 Aug after	26.0 °C	38 %	31 km/h	High 22
8 Aug after	26.4 °C	48 %	36 km/h	High 26
9 Aug after	30.2 °C	37 %	26 km/h	High 23

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Jul 2021

After · 10 Aug 2021

Before After

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 82Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Italy ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Reggio di Calabria fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 July 2021 to 3 August 2021 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 July 2021 to 30 July 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,088 hectares (10.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 4 municipalities: Montebello Jonico (670 ha, 12 %); Reggio di Calabria (279 ha, 1.2 %); Motta San Giovanni (134 ha, 2.9 %); Bagaladi (7 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire came within 1.9 km of the centre of Montebello Jonico, 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 32.2 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 23 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class 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 ›

Protezione Civile ↗
Carabinieri Forestali (1515) ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 30 July 2021 → 3 August 2021.

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

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What really happened?

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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 July 2021 to 30 July 2021. 82 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.

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.

Where it burned