Crișan fire, 3 February 2020 Crișan
The fire started on 3 February 2020 in Crișan, Romania, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 731 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.
Compare with…
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
- 731ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 3 Feb 2020 – 3 Feb 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 3 Feb
- 2020
- Danger at start
- 0
- Very low · FWI index
- Natura 2000
- 100%
- of the perimeter is protected land
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.6 mm on 4 Feb.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 594 ha in 2017, 704 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 710 ha that had burned before.
- 675 ha Crișan fire, February 2019 1,468 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 594 ha Crișan fire, February 2017 1,097 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 28 ha Sfântu Gheorghe fire, March 2019 10,396 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
730 ha1.9 %
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 land98 %
- Broadleaved forest1.0 %
- Other land cover0.6 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Feb | 13.3 °C | 61 % | 52 km/h | 6.3 mm | Very low 0 |
| 4 Feb after | 8.6 °C | 79 % | 50 km/h | 4.6 mm | Very low 0 |
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 2 February 2020 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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)
Other fires nearby
- 6,060 haSfântu GheorgheJanuary 2022 · 4 days · 7 km away
- 10,843 haSfântu GheorgheJanuary 2025 · 5 days · 8 km away
- 10,396 haSfântu Gheorghe10 March 2019 · 8 days · 8 km away
- 9,392 haSfântu Gheorghe18 March 2022 · 5 days · 8 km away
- 10,147 haSfântu Gheorghe18 February 2025 · 6 days · 10 km away
- 5,420 haSfântu Gheorghe8 March 2021 · 2 days · 18 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Crișan fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 3 February 2020 and 3 February 2020: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 731 hectares (7.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Crișan (730 ha, 1.9 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Crișan and came within 17.4 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 13.3 °C, humidity dropped to 61 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 0, class Very low.
- 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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.