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Galabovo fire, July 2016 Гълъбово · Galabovo, Topolovgrad

Out · last detection 1 Aug 2016, 12:07 UTC

The fire started on 31 July 2016 in Galabovo, Bulgaria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 812 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in Stara Zagora since 2016 (of 11 with a page). Number 6 in Bulgaria in 2016, of 24.

The power measured by the satellite is low (28.1 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
812ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
31 Jul 2016 – 1 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
31 Jul
2016
Heat detections
27
in a single hotspot: 28 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
128MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Jul1 Aug
1 Aug 2016

How it evolved, day by day

31 Jul 2016 · 60 MW · 5 1 Aug 2016 · 197 MW · 22
31 Jul 1 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
30km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 26 days 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.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.5% of the area of London (8.1 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Galabovo Гълъбово 9,941 inhabitants · 23.8 km from the centre where it started
    812 ha reached on 31 Jul
    2.2 %
  2. Topolovgrad Тополовград 8,260 inhabitants · 19.9 km from the centre
    0 ha
    0.0 %

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 areas79 %
  • Broadleaved forest7.5 %
  • Mixed forest6.8 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland6.4 %

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)
31 Jul 33.3 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Aug 33.9 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Aug after 33.5 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Aug after 30.2 °C 39 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Aug after 30.7 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Aug after 31.2 °C 39 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Aug after 32.9 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Aug after 32.8 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Aug after 31.2 °C 39 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Aug after 31.5 °C 33 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Aug after 32.6 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Aug after 34.3 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Jul 2016
After · 8 Aug 2016

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 1 August 2016 the air beside the fire reached 25 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak25 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1029 µg/m³
2930311234
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 · 27Every 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 Bulgaria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Galabovo fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 31 July 2016 and 1 August 2016: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 812 hectares (8.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Galabovo (812 ha, 2.2 %); Topolovgrad (0 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 19.9 km of the centre of Topolovgrad, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Bulgaria (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 · 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.

RSS Changes to this page

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. 27 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.

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 (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.