CRISAN fire, 24 March 2023 CRISAN
The fire started on 24 March 2023 in CRISAN, Romania, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 735 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.
- Burnt area
- 735ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 24 Mar 2023 – 25 Mar 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 24 Mar
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 26
- in a single hotspot: 198 MW
- Danger at start
- 2
- Very low · FWI index
- Energy released
- 1.1GW
- sum of detected power
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 one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.2 mm on 26 Mar.
This area had burned before
91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 543 ha in 2019, 205 ha in 2020, 599 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 666 ha that had burned before.
- 599 ha CRISAN fire, February 2022 830 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 543 ha CRISAN fire, February 2019 912 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 205 ha CRISAN fire, February 2020 205 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
736 ha reached on 24 Mar1.9 %
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 land91 %
- Other land cover8.6 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Mar | 18.2 °C | 51 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 25 Mar | 13.1 °C | 68 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 26 Mar after | 12.7 °C | 73 % | 38 km/h | 4.2 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 24 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 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 · 26Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,692 haSULINA22 March 2022 · 6 days · 18 km away
- 7,618 haSULINA14 February 2025 · 7 days · 20 km away
- 6,700 haCHILIA VECHE31 March 2022 · 3 days · 22 km away
- 10,843 haSFANTU GHEORGHEJanuary 2025 · 5 days · 29 km away
- 10,396 haSFANTU GHEORGHE10 March 2019 · 8 days · 32 km away
- 9,392 haSFANTU GHEORGHE18 March 2022 · 5 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the CRISAN fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 24 March 2023 and 25 March 2023: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 735 hectares (7.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered CRISAN (736 ha, 1.9 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The closest fire to a town centre came within 0.7 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 18.2 °C, humidity dropped to 51 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 4, 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
Satellite cross-check
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
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.