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Forotic fire, 25 March 2022 Forotic

Out · last detection 25 Mar 2022, 11:04 UTC

The fire started on 25 March 2022 in Forotic, Romania, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 183 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 110th largest in Caraș-Severin since 2016 (of 194 with a page). Number 84 in Romania in 2022, of 186.

The power measured by the satellite is low (11.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…
Burnt area
183ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
25 Mar 2022 – 26 Mar 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
25 Mar
2022
Heat detections
1
in a single hotspot: 12 MW
Danger at start
10
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
12MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Mar26 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

25 Mar 2022 · 12 MW · 1

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

19°high
40km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 16.8 mm on 31 Mar.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Forotic 1,488 inhabitants · 1.0 km from the town where it started
    183 ha reached on 25 Mar
    1.7 %

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

  • Agricultural areas88 %
  • Broadleaved forest12 %

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)
25 Mar 17.1 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
26 Mar 19.1 °C 28 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
27 Mar after 17.8 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
28 Mar after 19.5 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
29 Mar after 21.2 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
30 Mar after 18.2 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
31 Mar after 17.1 °C 45 % 53 km/h 16.8 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Mar 2022
After · 2 Apr 2022

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 32 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak32 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1051 µg/m³
23242526272829
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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Romania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Forotic fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 25 March 2022 and 26 March 2022: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 183 hectares (1.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Forotic (183 ha, 1.7 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 1.0 km of Forotic. 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 19.1 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 10, 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

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
What do you think is wrong?

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. One Suomi-NPP VIIRS detection 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.