How long did the BECHET fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 2 October 2026 to 11 October 2026 (10 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.

How much area did it burn?

There is no official perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 294 hectares with fire (2.9 km²); Copernicus will publish the measured figure within days.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 4 municipalities: DABULENI (112 ha, 0.6 %); BECHET (70 ha, 2.4 %); IANCA (70 ha, 0.6 %); CALARASI (42 ha, 0.5 %).

Is the BECHET fire still active?

No fire detections since 11 Oct 2026, 11:36 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.

Did the fire reach a town?

The closest fire to a town centre came within 1.3 km of BECHET. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 27.8 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Romania (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

RO · Romania · 2026-10-02 → 2026-10-11

BECHET fire, October 2026 DABULENI, BECHET, IANCA

Out · last detection 11 Oct 2026, 11:36 UTC

Satellites first detected fire on 2 October 2026 in BECHET, Romania. It has been active for 10 days, with 22 heat detections and an area with fire of about 294 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 4 municipalities.

The power measured by the satellite is low (12.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Copernicus has not yet published the burnt perimeter, which takes a few days to measure on satellite imagery. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). When the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.

Area with fire: ≈ 294ha; rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration: 10days; 2 Oct 2026 – 11 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit: 4; municipalities
Started on: 2 Oct; 2026
Heat detections: 22; in a single hotspot: 12 MW
Danger at start: 28; High · FWI index
Energy released: 109MW; sum of detected power

Play back 11 Oct 2026

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Oct11 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

2467891011

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

The weather it burned in

28°high

33km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 12 Oct.

What happened to each town

DABULENI 10,333 inhabitants · 2.8 km from the town

112 ha reached on 4 Oct

0.6 %
BECHET 4,355 inhabitants · 1.3 km from the town where it started

70 ha reached on 2 Oct

2.4 %
IANCA

70 ha reached on 2 Oct

0.6 %
CALARASI 5,195 inhabitants · 2.9 km from the town

42 ha reached on 6 Oct

0.5 %

Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
2 Oct	21.4 °C	28 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
3 Oct	20.8 °C	25 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
4 Oct	23.0 °C	23 %	14 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
5 Oct	24.4 °C	18 %	14 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
6 Oct	24.7 °C	22 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
7 Oct	25.9 °C	22 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
8 Oct	26.7 °C	20 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
9 Oct	27.8 °C	29 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
10 Oct	27.3 °C	41 %	27 km/h	2.2 mm	Moderate 12
11 Oct	25.0 °C	51 %	30 km/h	7.9 mm	Low 7
12 Oct after	17.3 °C	66 %	36 km/h	2.1 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Sept 2026

After · 18 Oct 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 10 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak17 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1021 µg/m³

Optical depth0.30

WHO 15

301234567891011121314

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 · 22Every 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 Romania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the BECHET fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 2 October 2026 to 11 October 2026 (10 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
How much area did it burn?: There is no official perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 294 hectares with fire (2.9 km²); Copernicus will publish the measured figure within days.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 4 municipalities: DABULENI (112 ha, 0.6 %); BECHET (70 ha, 2.4 %); IANCA (70 ha, 0.6 %); CALARASI (42 ha, 0.5 %).
Is the BECHET fire still active?: No fire detections since 11 Oct 2026, 11:36 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
Did the fire reach a town?: The closest fire to a town centre came within 1.3 km of BECHET. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 27.8 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Romania (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

IGSU · Inspectoratul General pentru Situații de Urgență ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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 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.

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 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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