Bihać fire, 20 March 2022 Bihać
The fire started on 20 March 2022 in Bihać, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,528 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 10th largest in Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2016 (of 520 with a page). Number 2 in Bosnia & Herzegovina in 2022, of 144.
The power measured by the satellite is low (18.0 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: Bihać · 2019Bihać · 2016Bihać · 2020Bihać · 2021
- Burnt area
- 3,528ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 8days
- 20 Mar 2022 – 27 Mar 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 20 Mar
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 102
- in a single hotspot: 18 MW
- Danger at start
- 6
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 48MW
- 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 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.5 mm on 30 Mar.
This area had burned before
22% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 226 ha in 2016, 56 ha in 2017, 288 ha in 2019, 191 ha in 2020, 137 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 772 ha that had burned before.
- 248 ha Bihać fire, March 2019 252 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 226 ha Bihać fire, December 2016 316 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 164 ha Bihać fire, February 2020 184 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 77 ha Bihać fire, March 2021 101 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 56 ha Bihać fire, March 2017 341 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 53 ha Bihać fire, February 2021 178 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
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).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Bihać where it started3,516 ha reached on 20 Mar3.6 %
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
- Broadleaved forest59 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland15 %
- Other natural land11 %
- Mixed forest6.8 %
- Agricultural areas4.6 %
- Coniferous forest2.9 %
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 0.18 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Mar | 10.6 °C | 18 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 21 Mar | 10.5 °C | 19 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 22 Mar | 14.0 °C | 23 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 23 Mar | 17.8 °C | 20 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 24 Mar | 21.0 °C | 11 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 25 Mar | 20.1 °C | 13 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 26 Mar | 20.0 °C | 16 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 27 Mar | 19.7 °C | 19 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 28 Mar after | 17.2 °C | 46 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 29 Mar after | 15.5 °C | 44 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 30 Mar after | 12.8 °C | 60 % | 60 km/h | 4.5 mm | Very low 1 |
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 · 102Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,515 haBosansko Grahovo22 March 2022 · 8 days · 16 km away
- 4,086 haOpćina Gračac5 August 2017 · 7 days · 19 km away
- 4,225 haOpćina Gračac21 March 2022 · 7 days · 20 km away
- 4,959 haOpćina Gračac5 April 2020 · 9 days · 26 km away
- 3,936 haOpćina Gračac22 March 2022 · 8 days · 32 km away
- 8,657 haBosansko GrahovoAugust 2026 · 2 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bihać fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 20 March 2022 and 27 March 2022: 8 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,528 hectares (35.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Bihać (3,516 ha, 3.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 21.0 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 12, class Moderate.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Bosnia & Herzegovina (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: 123 · 112 · 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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 102 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 ADM3 (Public Domain). 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.