How long did the CRISAN fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 23 March 2022 and 23 March 2022: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 177 hectares (1.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered CRISAN (178 ha, 0.5 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The closest fire to a town centre came within 5.7 km of CRISAN. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 12.2 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 7, class 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.

RO · Romania · 2022-03-23 → 2022-03-23

CRISAN fire, 23 March 2022 CRISAN

Out · last detection 23 Mar 2022, 11:42 UTC

The fire started on 23 March 2022 in CRISAN, Romania, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 177 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.

The power measured by the satellite is low (8.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 177ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 1day; 23 Mar 2022 – 23 Mar 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 23 Mar; 2022
Heat detections: 1; in a single hotspot: 8 MW
Danger at start: 7; Low · FWI index
Energy released: 8MW; sum of detected power

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Mar23 Mar

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

12°high

43km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 2 Apr.

This area had burned before

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 41 ha in 2020.

What happened to each town

CRISAN 1,092 inhabitants · 5.7 km from the town where it started

178 ha reached on 23 Mar

0.5 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

Other natural land99 %
Other land cover1.1 %

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)
23 Mar	12.2 °C	22 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
24 Mar after	18.4 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
25 Mar after	10.4 °C	35 %	38 km/h	0.5 mm	Low 7
26 Mar after	15.7 °C	26 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
27 Mar after	12.6 °C	19 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
28 Mar after	14.5 °C	21 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
29 Mar after	19.2 °C	32 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
30 Mar after	22.9 °C	25 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
31 Mar after	18.9 °C	48 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
1 Apr after	21.1 °C	37 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
2 Apr after	19.8 °C	39 %	66 km/h	1.3 mm	Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Mar 2022

After · 30 Mar 2022

Before After

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 24 March 2022 the air beside the fire reached 19 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak19 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1026 µg/m³

WHO 15

212223242526

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 · 1Every 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

All fires in Romania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the CRISAN fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 23 March 2022 and 23 March 2022: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 177 hectares (1.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered CRISAN (178 ha, 0.5 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The closest fire to a town centre came within 5.7 km of CRISAN. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 12.2 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 7, class 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

IGSU · Inspectoratul General pentru Situații de Urgență ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What really happened?

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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.

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.

Where it burned