Bussoleno fire, October 2017 Mompantero, Bussoleno, Chianocco
The fire started on 22 October 2017 in Bussoleno, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,534 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 5 municipalities.
It is the largest fire in Turin since 2016 (of 17 with a page). The largest in Italy in 2017, of 361.
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- Burnt area
- 3,534ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 9days
- 22 Oct 2017 – 30 Oct 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 5
- municipalities
- Started on
- 22 Oct
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 311
- in a single hotspot: 37 MW
- Danger at start
- 8
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 209MW
- 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 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.7 mm on 4 Nov.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
Mompantero 623 inhabitants · 0.6 km from the centre1,834 ha reached on 23 Oct60 %
-
Bussoleno where it started1,320 ha reached on 22 Oct36 %
-
Chianocco 1,528 inhabitants · 1.0 km from the centre214 ha reached on 22 Oct12 %
-
Novalesa 514 inhabitants · 2.1 km from the centre144 ha reached on 28 Oct5.0 %
-
Venaus 875 inhabitants · 1.0 km from the centre23 ha reached on 30 Oct1.2 %
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
- Mixed forest25 %
- Other natural land24 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland19 %
- Broadleaved forest15 %
- Coniferous forest15 %
- Agricultural areas2.2 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 54 %
- LIC Oasi xerotermiche della Val di Susa-Orrido di Chianocco IT1110030
- LIC Rocciamelone IT1110039
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 2015Inside the perimeter there were about 3.0 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Oct | 9.5 °C | 53 % | 86 km/h | 0.3 mm | Low 8 |
| 23 Oct | 7.8 °C | 52 % | 77 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 24 Oct | 15.0 °C | 44 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 25 Oct | 16.8 °C | 36 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 26 Oct | 18.5 °C | 28 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 11 |
| 27 Oct | 11.8 °C | 54 % | 79 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 28 Oct | 13.0 °C | 32 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 29 Oct | 10.9 °C | 42 % | 90 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 11 |
| 30 Oct | 11.1 °C | 53 % | 57 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 31 Oct after | 10.0 °C | 57 % | 19 km/h | 0.9 mm | Very low 3 |
| 1 Nov after | 11.7 °C | 41 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 2 Nov after | 11.7 °C | 36 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 3 Nov after | 13.0 °C | 38 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 4 Nov after | 8.1 °C | 72 % | 36 km/h | 3.7 mm | Very low 0 |
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 · 311Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bussoleno fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 October 2017 to 30 October 2017 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 October 2017 to 27 October 2017.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,534 hectares (35.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 5 municipalities: Mompantero (1,834 ha, 60 %); Bussoleno (1,320 ha, 36 %); Chianocco (214 ha, 12 %); Novalesa (144 ha, 5.0 %); Venaus (23 ha, 1.2 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 0.6 km of the centre of Mompantero, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 18.5 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 90 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 11, class Moderate.
- 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 27 October 2017 → 30 October 2017.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 October 2017 to 27 October 2017. 311 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 2015, 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.