How long did the Burgas fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 14 August 2023 and 16 August 2023: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 514 hectares (5.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Burgas (515 ha, 0.9 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Burgas and came within 15.1 km of its centre. 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 27.9 °C, humidity dropped to 43 % and gusts hit 59 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 Bulgaria (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

BG · Bulgaria · 2023-08-14 → 2023-08-16

Burgas fire, 14 August 2023 Бургас · Burgas

Out · last detection 16 Aug 2023, 00:37 UTC

The fire started on 14 August 2023 in Burgas, Bulgaria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 514 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 7th largest in Burgas since 2016 (of 33 with a page). Number 7 in Bulgaria in 2023, of 25.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Burgas · 2016 Burgas · 2024 Burgas · 2017 Burgas · 2016

Burnt area: 514ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 3days; 14 Aug 2023 – 16 Aug 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 14 Aug; 2023
Heat detections: 13; in a single hotspot: 35 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 95MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Aug16 Aug

Play back 16 Aug 2023

How it evolved, day by day

14 Aug 15 Aug 16 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

28°high

59km/h · peak gust

43%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 33 ha in 2016.

33 ha Burgas fire, July 2016 188 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.3% of the area of London (5.1 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

Burgas Бургас 189,086 inhabitants · 15.1 km from the centre where it started

515 ha reached on 14 Aug

0.9 %

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

Scrub and transitional woodland51 %
Other natural land24 %
Agricultural areas17 %
Broadleaved forest7.1 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %

LIC Aytoska planina BG0000151

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
14 Aug	27.6 °C	43 %	58 km/h	0.2 mm	High 26
15 Aug	26.5 °C	62 %	59 km/h	0.4 mm	High 22
16 Aug	27.9 °C	59 %	54 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 21
17 Aug after	28.9 °C	53 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
18 Aug after	29.0 °C	48 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
19 Aug after	28.2 °C	48 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
20 Aug after	31.4 °C	35 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
21 Aug after	33.0 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Aug after	31.8 °C	40 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
23 Aug after	31.0 °C	43 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
24 Aug after	28.8 °C	57 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
25 Aug after	29.2 °C	52 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
26 Aug after	29.6 °C	44 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Aug 2023

After · 23 Aug 2023

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 19 August 2023 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

PM1030 µg/m³

Optical depth0.66

WHO 15

1213141516171819

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 · 13Every 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 Bulgaria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Burgas fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 14 August 2023 and 16 August 2023: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 514 hectares (5.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Burgas (515 ha, 0.9 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Burgas and came within 15.1 km of its centre. 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 27.9 °C, humidity dropped to 43 % and gusts hit 59 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 Bulgaria (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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

ГДПБЗН · Пожарна безопасност и защита на населението ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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.

How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 13 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 2025, 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 ADM2 (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.

Where it burned