Skip to content
worldfires
AL · Albania · →

Bulqizë fire, 22 July 2025 Bulqizë

Out · last detection 22 Jul 2025, 11:24 UTC

The fire started on 22 July 2025 in Bulqizë, Albania, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 252 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 18th largest in Dibër since 2016 (of 54 with a page). Number 35 in Albania in 2025, of 71.

The power measured by the satellite is low (14.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
252ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
22 Jul 2025 – 22 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
22 Jul
2025
Heat detections
6
in a single hotspot: 14 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Energy released
10MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Jul22 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

22

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
42km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.1 mm on 29 Jul.

This area had burned before

22% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 55 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Bulqizë where it started
    252 ha reached on 15 Jul
    0.4 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Scrub and transitional woodland44 %
  • Other natural land39 %
  • Broadleaved forest17 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

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)
22 Jul 30.8 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
23 Jul after 30.1 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
24 Jul after 31.1 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
25 Jul after 32.9 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Jul after 33.7 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.3 mm High 31
27 Jul after 26.9 °C 40 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Jul after 25.4 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
29 Jul after 21.5 °C 61 % 36 km/h 3.1 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Jul 2025
After · 29 Jul 2025

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 25 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak16 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1044 µg/m³
Optical depth0.28
202122232425
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 · 6Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Albania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bulqizë fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 22 July 2025 and 22 July 2025: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 252 hectares (2.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bulqizë (252 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.8 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Albania (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: 128 · 112

Satellite cross-check

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
What do you think is wrong?

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 128 · 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 2.5 Generic). 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.