CERAT fire, October 2026 GIURGITA, CERAT, LIPOVU
Satellites first detected fire on 6 October 2026 in CERAT, Romania. It has been active for 3 days, with 11 heat detections and an area with fire of about 154 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 3 municipalities.
The power measured by the satellite is low (14.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Copernicus has not yet published the burnt perimeter, which takes a few days to measure on satellite imagery. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). When the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.
- Area with fire
- ≈ 154ha
- rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
- Duration
- 3days
- 6 Oct 2026 – 8 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- municipalities
- Started on
- 6 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 11
- in a single hotspot: 14 MW
- Danger at start
- 27
- High · FWI index
- Energy released
- 106MW
- sum of detected power
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. Rain came after the fire: 5.8 mm on 11 Oct.
What happened to each town
-
GIURGITA 2,730 inhabitants · 4.9 km from the town84 ha reached on 6 Oct1.2 %
-
70 ha reached on 6 Oct1.7 %
-
LIPOVU 3,208 inhabitants · 3.2 km from the town0 ha reached on 6 Oct0.0 %
Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Oct | 23.7 °C | 20 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 5 Oct | 25.1 °C | 16 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 6 Oct | 25.4 °C | 19 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 7 Oct | 26.1 °C | 20 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 8 Oct | 27.0 °C | 19 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 9 Oct after | 28.2 °C | 35 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 10 Oct after | 27.6 °C | 37 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 11 Oct after | 22.2 °C | 53 % | 32 km/h | 5.8 mm | Low 6 |
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 11 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 11Every 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 CERAT fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 6 October 2026 to 8 October 2026 (3 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
- How much area did it burn?
- There is no official perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 154 hectares with fire (1.5 km²); Copernicus will publish the measured figure within days.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: GIURGITA (84 ha, 1.2 %); CERAT (70 ha, 1.7 %); LIPOVU (0 ha, 0.0 %).
- Is the CERAT fire still active?
- No fire detections since 8 Oct 2026, 10:51 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The closest fire to a town centre came within 1.6 km of CERAT. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 27.0 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 19 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Romania (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
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
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 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.