Burned area
satellite only1,161ha
Perimeter published by EFFIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- perimeter revised on 26 August 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
RO · Romania · –
Chilia Veche fire, August 2026 Chilia Veche
Out · last detection 18 Aug 2026, 10:43 UTC
The fire started on 16 August 2026 in Chilia Veche, Romania, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,161 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
This record is fire in the reed beds of the Danube Delta, not a forest fire. Thousands of hectares of reed burn in the delta every year, mostly between January and April, and many of these burns are deliberate. That is why it is left out of the fire rankings.
Use this data
Compare with…
Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-24matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only3days
16 Aug 2026 to 18 Aug 2026: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 18 Aug 2026, 10:43 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only16 Aug 2026
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- EFFIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 16 Aug 2026
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
Hotspots
satellite only38
VIIRS detections at 375 m. Most intense hotspot: 467 MW.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (Suomi NPP)
- Date
- 16 Aug 2026 – 18 Aug 2026
+− cross-check
There is no official record to compare with. Each hotspot is a pixel detected in one satellite pass, not a separate fire.
The worst day
satellite only940MW
Total radiative power on 16 August 2026; hotspots that day: 9.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 16 Aug 2026
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model29.2FWI · high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 23.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 16 Aug 2026, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model30.8°C · 37% RH
High of 30.8 °C and minimum humidity of 37% on 18 August 2026; gusts of 44 km/h on 18 August 2026.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 16 Aug 2026 – 18 Aug 2026
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
· reconstructed perimeterEFFIS (Copernicus) revises the perimeter
What was saved on 24 October 2026
Every night a snapshot of what the page shows is saved. If anything changes, it appears in the list as a log entry.
- Area
- 1,161 ha
- Dates
- 16 Aug 2026 – 18 Aug 2026
- Name
- Chilia Veche
- Official record
- —
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/chilia-veche-2026-08?v=2026-10-24A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire chilia-veche-2026-08.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-16 | 9 | 940 | 29.2 | 15 | 30 | 12.2 | 29.9 | 0 | 29.2 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-08-17 | 15 | 284 | 29.5 | 17.2 | 31 | 14.1 | 24.1 | 0 | 32.8 | alto | 1 |
| 2026-08-18 | 14 | 359 | 30.8 | 17.5 | 37 | 23.5 | 43.6 | 0.3 | 49.2 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2026-08-19 | 0 | 0 | 26.8 | 18 | 38 | 16.9 | 29.5 | 1 | 14.6 | moderado | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: EFFIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 1,161ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 3days
- 16 Aug 2026 – 18 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 16 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 38
- in a single hotspot: 467 MW
- Danger at start
- 29
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 528MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
16 Aug18 Aug
18 Aug 2026
How it evolved, day by day
16 Aug
17 Aug
18 Aug
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
31°high
44km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity
It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 19 Aug.
This area had burned before
2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 23 ha in 2020.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Bucharest boundary: geoBoundaries · World Bank (CC BY 4.0).
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
-
1,162 ha reached on 16 Aug2.2 %
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 land100 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %
- LIC Delta Dunării ROSCI0065
- ZEPA Delta Dunării și Complexul Razim - Sinoie ROSPA0031
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Aug | 29.2 °C | 30 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 17 Aug | 29.5 °C | 31 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 18 Aug | 30.8 °C | 37 % | 44 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 49 |
| 19 Aug after | 26.8 °C | 38 % | 30 km/h | 1.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 29.2, a minimum humidity of 30% and 23 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2019: 29.
FWI at the start
29.2
Minimum humidity
30 %
Days without rain
23
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Chilia Veche fire, August 2026
1,161 ha
3 days
FWI 29.2
Min. humidity 30 %
Tatarbunary fire, August 2025
105 ha
2 days
FWI 30.2
Min. humidity 29 %
25 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Izmali fire, August 2025
326 ha
10 days
FWI 33.0
Min. humidity 30 %
30 km away, in 2025
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.8 mm on 23 Aug.
Ochakiv fire, June 2026
134 ha
5 days
FWI 29.8
Min. humidity 29 %
228 km away, in 2026
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.5 mm on 4 Jul.
Ovidiopol fire, June 2024
126 ha
4 days
FWI 28.2
Min. humidity 29 %
158 km away, in 2024
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Reni fire, August 2022
452 ha
2 days
FWI 27.9
Min. humidity 32 %
76 km away, in 2022
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.1 mm on 16 Aug.
What happened to them
- 2 days
- median duration
- 196 ha
- median area
- 7 %
- went past 1,000 ha
- 2.5 mm
- rain at the end (median; 14 of 29 had it)
It was 5.9 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 3 days, against 2 days.
Only 2 of its 29 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 15 of 29, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.5 mm.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
1.0 mmfirst rain
19 Augthe day after it ended
44km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 18 Aug, and on 19 Aug 1.0 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 14 of 29, with a median of 2.5 mm.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2019.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 9 Aug 2026
After · 25 Aug 2026
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 19 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 34 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
PM2.5 peak34 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1056 µg/m³
Optical depth0.55
WHO 15
14 Aug16 Aug18 Aug
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 · 38Every 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 time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 6,700 haChilia Veche31 March 2022 · 4 days · 5 km away
- 3,412 haChilia Veche29 March 2025 · 1 day · 6 km away
- 3,327 haC.A. Rosetti21 January 2020 · 4 days · 15 km away
- 6,252 haKiliia Кілійський район24 March 2022 · 9 days · 16 km away
- 5,149 haKiliia Кілійський район3 January 2026 · 1 day · 17 km away
- 7,692 haSulina20 March 2022 · 9 days · 19 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Chilia Veche fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (16 August 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 18 August 2026 (3 days from 16 August 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,161 hectares (11.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Chilia Veche (1,162 ha, 2.2 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Chilia Veche and came within 14.5 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 30.8 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very 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.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2019 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 29. Their median duration was 2 days and their median area 196 ha; 7 % went past 1,000 ha. Only 2 of its 29 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 15 of 29, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.5 mm.
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 With cross-checks and a citable version
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.
- The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 38 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.
- Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.
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.