Butera fire, 20 July 2023 Butera
The fire started on 20 July 2023 in Butera, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 536 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 8th largest in Caltanissetta since 2016 (of 149 with a page). Number 34 in Italy in 2023, of 207.
The power measured by the satellite is low (21.6 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…
- Burnt area
- 536ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 20 Jul 2023 – 21 Jul 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 20 Jul
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 5
- in a single hotspot: 22 MW
- Danger at start
- 47
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 42MW
- 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 34 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
42% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 184 ha in 2019, 43 ha in 2020.
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
-
536 ha reached on 20 Jul1.8 %
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
- Other natural land53 %
- Agricultural areas47 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 4 %
- ZEPA + LIC Rupe di Falconara ITA050008
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.20 hectares of 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Jul | 39.1 °C | 16 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 21 Jul | 36.7 °C | 21 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 22 Jul after | 37.2 °C | 19 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 23 Jul after | 38.3 °C | 20 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 24 Jul after | 37.4 °C | 19 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 25 Jul after | 36.7 °C | 32 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 26 Jul after | 33.7 °C | 33 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 27 Jul after | 32.4 °C | 33 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 28 Jul after | 29.2 °C | 42 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 29 Jul after | 32.4 °C | 46 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 30 Jul after | 33.9 °C | 30 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 31 Jul after | 34.0 °C | 22 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 21 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 31 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 5Every 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 Butera fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 20 July 2023 and 21 July 2023: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 536 hectares (5.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Butera (536 ha, 1.8 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Butera and came within 9.7 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 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very high.
- 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 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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 5 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.
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.