Craco fire, August 2026 Craco, Ferrandina
The fire started on 30 August 2026 in Craco, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 845 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the largest fire in Matera since 2016 (of 30 with a page). Number 24 in Italy in 2026, of 231.
The power measured by the satellite is low (12.7 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
- 845ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 2days
- 30 Aug 2026 – 31 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 30 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 12
- in a single hotspot: 13 MW
- Danger at start
- 66
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 26MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 2 Sept.
This area had burned before
14% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 118 ha in 2025.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Rome boundary: geoBoundaries · ISTAT, National Institute of Statistics (CC BY 3.0).
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
-
778 ha reached on 30 Aug10 %
-
Ferrandina 8,032 inhabitants · 9.6 km from the centre68 ha reached on 31 Aug0.3 %
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 areas76 %
- Other natural land22 %
- Broadleaved forest1.8 %
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 Aug | 39.8 °C | 19 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 31 Aug | 37.3 °C | 31 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 1 Sept after | 35.9 °C | 31 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 2 Sept after | 35.1 °C | 30 % | 20 km/h | 1.2 mm | High 25 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 30 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 25 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 12Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Craco fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (30 August 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 31 August 2026 (2 days from 30 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 845 hectares (8.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Craco (778 ha, 10 %); Ferrandina (68 ha, 0.3 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Craco and reached its centre: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.8 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, 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.
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. 12 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.
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.