Bagaladi fire, 4 August 2021 Roccaforte del Greco, San Lorenzo, Cardeto
The fire started on 4 August 2021 in Bagaladi, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 7,096 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 8 municipalities.
It is the largest fire in Reggio di Calabria since 2016 (of 101 with a page). Number 3 in Italy in 2021, of 291.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 7,096ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 6days
- 4 Aug 2021 – 9 Aug 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 8
- municipalities
- Started on
- 4 Aug
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 322
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Danger at start
- 26
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.1GW
- 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 14 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: 113 ha in 2017, 49 ha in 2019, 107 ha in 2020.
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
-
Roccaforte del Greco 340 inhabitants · fire reached the centre2,497 ha57 %
-
San Lorenzo 952 inhabitants · 1.3 km from the centre1,620 ha25 %
-
Cardeto 1,325 inhabitants · 4.0 km from the centre732 ha20 %
-
673 ha14 %
-
Condofuri 4,604 inhabitants · 0.6 km from the centre646 ha11 %
-
544 ha10 %
-
388 ha13 %
-
Reggio di Calabria 170,951 inhabitants · 15.9 km from the centre8 ha0.0 %
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 forest31 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland20 %
- Mixed forest16 %
- Agricultural areas12 %
- Other natural land10 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub6.1 %
- Broadleaved forest5.5 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 0 %
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 2.9 hectares of built-up land and about 250 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
Checked against the press
Checked on 29 September 2026We checked this page against 4 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
Sources
- Nota stampa Ente Parco su incendi — Parco Nazionale dell'Aspromonte (nota stampa Ente Parco), 7 August 2021 · official source
- Aspromonte, il paradiso può attendere — I Calabresi, 10 May 2022
- Parco Aspromonte: dopo gli incendi che cosa fare? — GeoMagazine, 30 August 2021
- «Il fuoco si è spento da solo» nell'Aspromonte ferito — I Calabresi, 17 August 2021
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Aug | 28.9 °C | 33 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 5 Aug | 26.1 °C | 43 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 6 Aug | 23.2 °C | 47 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 7 Aug | 24.2 °C | 38 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 8 Aug | 24.5 °C | 47 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 9 Aug | 28.4 °C | 36 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 10 Aug after | 30.7 °C | 23 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 11 Aug after | 31.8 °C | 26 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 12 Aug after | 26.7 °C | 38 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 13 Aug after | 26.6 °C | 41 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 14 Aug after | 25.5 °C | 49 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 15 Aug after | 25.9 °C | 42 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 16 Aug after | 26.2 °C | 41 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 17 Aug after | 28.6 °C | 30 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 18 Aug after | 24.1 °C | 53 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 19 Aug after | 22.9 °C | 57 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
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.
Detections table · 0Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,088 haReggio di Calabria27 July 2021 · 8 days · 12 km away
- 894 haReggio di Calabria18 July 2023 · 9 days · 16 km away
- 3,114 haMotta San GiovanniJuly 2023 · 6 days · 18 km away
- 911 haReggio di Calabria5 July 2017 · 9 days · 19 km away
- 1,199 haReggio di Calabria18 July 2023 · 9 days · 20 km away
- 1,633 haMessina24 July 2023 · 3 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bagaladi fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 4 August 2021 and 9 August 2021: 6 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 7,096 hectares (71.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 8 municipalities: Roccaforte del Greco (2,497 ha, 57 %); San Lorenzo (1,620 ha, 25 %); Cardeto (732 ha, 20 %); Roghudi (673 ha, 14 %); Condofuri (646 ha, 11 %); Africo (544 ha, 10 %); Bagaladi (388 ha, 13 %); Reggio di Calabria (8 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire reached the centre of Roccaforte del Greco: 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 28.9 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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 ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 16 August 2021 → 9 August 2021.
- Start date: 31 July 2021 → 4 August 2021.
- Last day with fire: 9 August 2021 → 16 August 2021.
- Start date: 4 August 2021 → 31 July 2021.
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. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Checked against news and agencies: 4 confirmed sources.
- 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.