Enna fire, 30 July 2021 Aidone, Enna
The fire started on 30 July 2021 in Enna, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,024 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 3th largest in Enna since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 8 in Italy in 2021, of 291.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,024ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 5days
- 30 Jul 2021 – 3 Aug 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 30 Jul
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 155
- in a single hotspot: 75 MW
- Danger at start
- 45
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 666MW
- 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 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 30 ha in 2016, 1,275 ha in 2017, 124 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,294 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Aidone 4,183 inhabitants · 2.7 km from the centre1,230 ha reached on 1 Aug5.8 %
-
797 ha reached on 31 Jul2.2 %
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
- Broadleaved forest50 %
- Agricultural areas22 %
- Coniferous forest11 %
- Other natural land9.6 %
- Mixed forest4.8 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub1.8 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 80 %
- ZEPA + LIC Boschi di Piazza Armerina ITA060012
- ZEPA + LIC Vallone Rossomanno ITA060010
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.37 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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 Jul | 33.3 °C | 26 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 31 Jul | 33.7 °C | 31 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 1 Aug | 35.1 °C | 29 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 2 Aug | 34.4 °C | 29 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 3 Aug | 33.0 °C | 25 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 4 Aug after | 34.0 °C | 25 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 5 Aug after | 31.9 °C | 32 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 6 Aug after | 29.8 °C | 34 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 7 Aug after | 29.4 °C | 36 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 8 Aug after | 30.5 °C | 35 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 9 Aug after | 33.2 °C | 32 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 10 Aug after | 36.1 °C | 23 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 11 Aug after | 37.5 °C | 22 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 12 Aug after | 34.0 °C | 33 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 13 Aug after | 32.1 °C | 36 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
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.
Detections table · 155Every 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 Enna fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 30 July 2021 and 3 August 2021: 5 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,024 hectares (20.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Aidone (1,230 ha, 5.8 %); Enna (797 ha, 2.2 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Enna and came within 2.5 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 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, class Very high.
- 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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 155 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.