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Cherven Bryag fire, 15 July 2024 Червен бряг · Cherven Bryag

Out · last measured on 16 Jul 2024

The fire started on 15 July 2024 in Cherven Bryag, Bulgaria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,541 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2th largest in Pleven since 2016 (of 23 with a page). Number 4 in Bulgaria in 2024, of 62.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cherven Bryag · 2019Cherven Bryag · 2019Cherven Bryag · 2024Cherven Bryag · 2026

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
1,541ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
15 Jul 2024 – 16 Jul 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
15 Jul
2024
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Natura 2000
38%
of the perimeter is protected land

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

38°high
37km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.1 mm on 21 Jul.

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 174 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1% of the area of London (15 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 · 4.4 km from the centre where it started
    1,542 ha
    3.5 %

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 areas88 %
  • Broadleaved forest9.6 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland2.8 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 38 %

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)
15 Jul 38.0 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Jul 38.2 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Jul after 39.4 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Jul after 37.4 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Jul after 35.3 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Jul after 37.1 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
21 Jul after 32.8 °C 42 % 33 km/h 7.1 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Jul 2024
After · 23 Jul 2024

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 18 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1018 µg/m³
Optical depth0.65
13141516171819
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Bulgaria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Cherven Bryag fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 15 July 2024 and 16 July 2024: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,541 hectares (15.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cherven Bryag (1,542 ha, 3.5 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Cherven Bryag and came within 4.4 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 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very 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. No 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.