Gacko fire, February 2020 Gacko
The fire started on 19 February 2020 in Gacko, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 980 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 54th largest in Republika Srpska since 2016 (of 391 with a page). Number 21 in Bosnia & Herzegovina in 2020, of 183.
The power measured by the satellite is low (19.4 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
- 980ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 4days
- 19 Feb 2020 – 22 Feb 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 19 Feb
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 8
- in a single hotspot: 19 MW
- Danger at start
- 0
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 49MW
- 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 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 14.4 mm on 26 Feb.
This area had burned before
73% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 711 ha in 2016, 1 ha in 2019.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
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).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Gacko where it started982 ha reached on 19 Feb1.3 %
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 land98 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland2.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Feb | 7.4 °C | 49 % | 23 km/h | 1.3 mm | Very low 0 |
| 20 Feb | 1.6 °C | 43 % | 65 km/h | 6.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 21 Feb | 7.0 °C | 28 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 22 Feb | 4.4 °C | 33 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 23 Feb after | 9.7 °C | 33 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 24 Feb after | 8.6 °C | 53 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 25 Feb after | 11.6 °C | 40 % | 56 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very low 2 |
| 26 Feb after | 7.9 °C | 72 % | 68 km/h | 14.4 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.
Detections table · 8Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,001 haKalinovik18 March 2020 · 6 days · 9 km away
- 3,843 haKalinovikJanuary 2024 · 5 days · 16 km away
- 4,094 haNevesinje16 August 2026 · 1 day · 21 km away
- 4,021 haBilećaAugust 2026 · 12 days · 24 km away
- 4,594 haBileća15 March 2022 · 1 day · 38 km away
- 3,663 haBileća11 August 2025 · 6 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Gacko fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 19 February 2020 and 22 February 2020: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 980 hectares (9.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Gacko (982 ha, 1.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 7.4 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 0, class Very low.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Bosnia & Herzegovina (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: 123 · 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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 8 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.
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 ADM3 (Public Domain). 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.