Favara fire, June 2017 Favara, Agrigento, Naro
The fire started on 30 June 2017 in Favara, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 316 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 68th largest in Agrigento since 2016 (of 289 with a page). Number 87 in Italy in 2017, of 361.
The power measured by the satellite is low (18.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
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- Burnt area
- 316ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 30 Jun 2017 – 30 Jun 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- municipalities
- Started on
- 30 Jun
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 9
- in a single hotspot: 18 MW
- Danger at start
- 45
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 108MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
30 Jun 2017 · 108 MW · 9
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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
What happened to each town
-
205 ha reached on 30 Jun2.5 %
-
Agrigento 55,512 inhabitants · 11.7 km from the centre86 ha reached on 30 Jun0.4 %
-
Naro 7,007 inhabitants · 8.4 km from the centre25 ha0.1 %
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 areas67 %
- Other natural land33 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2015Inside the perimeter there were about 0.25 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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 Jun | 34.3 °C | 30 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 1 Jul after | 33.3 °C | 36 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 2 Jul after | 29.8 °C | 33 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 3 Jul after | 31.5 °C | 26 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 4 Jul after | 31.5 °C | 29 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 5 Jul after | 30.0 °C | 38 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 6 Jul after | 30.7 °C | 35 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 7 Jul after | 33.0 °C | 23 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 8 Jul after | 34.4 °C | 18 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 9 Jul after | 34.6 °C | 19 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 10 Jul after | 33.1 °C | 20 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
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 28 June 2017 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)
Detections table · 9Every 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 Favara fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 30 June 2017 and 30 June 2017: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 316 hectares (3.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Favara (205 ha, 2.5 %); Agrigento (86 ha, 0.4 %); Naro (25 ha, 0.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Favara and came within 5.0 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 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 43 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.
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How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 9 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 2015, 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.