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Corlățel fire, August 2024 Corlățel, Vlădaia

Out · last detection 14 Aug 2024, 11:36 UTC

The fire started on 14 August 2024 in Corlățel, Romania, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 117 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 75th largest in Mehedinți since 2016 (of 87 with a page). Number 75 in Romania in 2024, of 92.

The power measured by the satellite is low (22.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…
Burnt area
117ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
14 Aug 2024 – 14 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
14 Aug
2024
Heat detections
8
in a single hotspot: 22 MW
Danger at start
50
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
81MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Aug14 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

14 Aug 2024 · 81 MW · 8

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
35km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 17 Aug.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Corlățel where it started
    75 ha reached on 14 Aug
    1.7 %
  2. 42 ha reached on 14 Aug
    0.5 %

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 areas62 %
  • Broadleaved forest38 %

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)
14 Aug 38.3 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 50
15 Aug after 37.2 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Aug after 37.3 °C 25 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Aug after 36.9 °C 28 % 28 km/h 1.2 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Aug 2024
After · 21 Aug 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 17 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 9 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak9 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1012 µg/m³
Optical depth0.47
121314151617
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 · 8Every 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 Romania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Corlățel fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 14 August 2024 and 14 August 2024: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 117 hectares (1.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Corlățel (75 ha, 1.7 %); Vlădaia (42 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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.

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
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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. 8 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 (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.