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Chiaramonte Gulfi fire, June 2017 Chiaramonte Gulfi, Ragusa, Monterosso Almo

Out · last detection 3 Jul 2017, 12:04 UTC

The fire started on 30 June 2017 in Chiaramonte Gulfi, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,329 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 2th largest in Ragusa since 2016 (of 11 with a page). Number 13 in Italy in 2017, of 361.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chiaramonte Gulfi · 2016Monterosso Almo · 2021Francofonte · 2026Niscemi · 2025

Burnt area
1,329ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
30 Jun 2017 – 3 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
30 Jun
2017
Heat detections
70
in a single hotspot: 93 MW
Danger at start
54
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
270MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jun3 Jul
3 Jul 2017

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jun 2017 · 434 MW · 12 1 Jul 2017 · 638 MW · 56 2 Jul 2017 · 3 MW · 1 3 Jul 2017 · 7 MW · 1
30 Jun 1 Jul 2 Jul 3 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
52km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.8% of the area of London (13 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. Chiaramonte Gulfi 2,783 inhabitants · 2.5 km from the centre where it started
    1,166 ha reached on 30 Jun
    9.2 %
  2. Ragusa 73,159 inhabitants · 7.4 km from the centre
    158 ha reached on 30 Jun
    0.4 %
  3. Monterosso Almo
    7 ha
    0.1 %

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

  • Coniferous forest53 %
  • Agricultural areas40 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland7.6 %

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)
30 Jun 36.9 °C 16 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
1 Jul 34.3 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
2 Jul 29.7 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Jul 28.0 °C 29 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Jul after 28.7 °C 26 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Jul after 29.4 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Jul after 31.3 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Jul after 32.3 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Jul after 32.6 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Jul after 33.6 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
10 Jul after 33.5 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Jul after 33.5 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
12 Jul after 33.5 °C 13 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
13 Jul after 36.6 °C 17 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Jun 2017
After · 10 Jul 2017

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 30 June 2017 the air beside the fire reached 23 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak23 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1045 µg/m³
282930123456
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 · 70Every 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 Italy ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chiaramonte Gulfi fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 30 June 2017 and 3 July 2017: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,329 hectares (13.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Chiaramonte Gulfi (1,166 ha, 9.2 %); Ragusa (158 ha, 0.4 %); Monterosso Almo (7 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Chiaramonte Gulfi and came within 2.5 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 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
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.

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 · 1515.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 70 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 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.