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Cherven Bryag fire, 7 September 2019 Червен бряг · Cherven Bryag, Roman, Byala Slatina

Out · last detection 8 Sept 2019, 11:22 UTC

The fire started on 7 September 2019 in Cherven Bryag, Bulgaria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 864 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Pleven since 2016 (of 23 with a page). Number 2 in Bulgaria in 2019, of 42.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cherven Bryag · 2016Roman · 2017Cherven Bryag · 2017Cherven Bryag · 2026

Burnt area
864ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
7 Sept 2019 – 8 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
7 Sept
2019
Heat detections
13
in a single hotspot: 52 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
161MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Sept8 Sept
8 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

7 Sept 2019 · 177 MW · 4 8 Sept 2019 · 145 MW · 9
7 Sept 8 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

29°high
44km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 34 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 23 Sept.

This area had burned before

61% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 391 ha in 2016, 193 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 526 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.5% of the area of London (8.6 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

  1. Cherven Bryag Червен бряг 21,479 inhabitants · 13.2 km from the centre where it started
    653 ha reached on 7 Sept
    1.5 %
  2. Roman Роман 4,632 inhabitants · 8.2 km from the centre
    182 ha reached on 8 Sept
    0.6 %
  3. Byala Slatina Бяла Слатина 18,850 inhabitants · 20.1 km from the centre
    29 ha
    0.0 %

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

  • Agricultural areas52 %
  • Other natural land21 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland18 %
  • Broadleaved forest8.8 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %

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.

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)
7 Sept 27.9 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Sept 28.9 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Sept after 28.0 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Sept after 26.7 °C 35 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Sept after 25.1 °C 35 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Sept after 25.5 °C 36 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
13 Sept after 27.5 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Sept after 28.7 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
15 Sept after 25.8 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Sept after 28.9 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Sept after 30.6 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Sept after 25.7 °C 23 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
19 Sept after 21.4 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm High 36
20 Sept after 18.6 °C 36 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Sept after 19.7 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Sept after 23.5 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Sept after 23.3 °C 34 % 25 km/h 2.0 mm Moderate 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Aug 2019
After · 15 Sept 2019

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 15 September 2019 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak26 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1033 µg/m³
56789101112131415161718
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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Bulgaria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cherven Bryag fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 7 September 2019 and 8 September 2019: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 864 hectares (8.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Cherven Bryag (653 ha, 1.5 %); Roman (182 ha, 0.6 %); Byala Slatina (29 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 8.2 km of the centre of Roman, 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 28.9 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 ›

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.

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?

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.

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.