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Gazi Baba fire, March 2019 Општина Гази Баба · Gazi Baba, Lipkovo

Out · last detection 20 Mar 2019, 11:47 UTC

The fire started on 17 March 2019 in Gazi Baba, North Macedonia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 171 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 21th largest in Skopje since 2016 (of 31 with a page). Number 42 in North Macedonia in 2019, of 77.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Jegunovtse · 2025Veles · 2019Saraj · 2017Kumanovo · 2021

Burnt area
171ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
17 Mar 2019 – 20 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
17 Mar
2019
Heat detections
12
in a single hotspot: 46 MW
Danger at start
7
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
46MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Mar20 Mar
20 Mar 2019

How it evolved, day by day

17 Mar 2019 · 1 MW · 1 18 Mar 2019 · 164 MW · 7 19 Mar 2019 · 17 MW · 3 20 Mar 2019 · 4 MW · 1
17 Mar 18 Mar 19 Mar 20 Mar

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
27km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 19 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Gazi Baba Општина Гази Баба 69,626 inhabitants · 6.0 km from the centre where it started
    166 ha reached on 17 Mar
    1.5 %
  2. Lipkovo Општина Липково 22,308 inhabitants · 6.5 km from the centre
    6 ha reached on 18 Mar
    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

  • Other natural land47 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland27 %
  • Broadleaved forest25 %

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)
17 Mar 19.3 °C 9 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
18 Mar 19.2 °C 11 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
19 Mar 15.2 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
20 Mar 11.0 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
21 Mar after 11.1 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
22 Mar after 13.1 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
23 Mar after 15.2 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
24 Mar after 16.2 °C 7 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
25 Mar after 18.4 °C 3 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
26 Mar after 7.6 °C 34 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
27 Mar after 8.5 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
28 Mar after 11.0 °C 13 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Mar 2019
After · 27 Mar 2019

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 17 March 2019 the air beside the fire reached 54 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak54 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM1070 µg/m³
15161718192021
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 · 12Every 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 North Macedonia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Gazi Baba fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 March 2019 to 20 March 2019 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 March 2019 to 18 March 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 171 hectares (1.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Gazi Baba (166 ha, 1.5 %); Lipkovo (6 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Gazi Baba and came within 6.0 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 19.3 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 27 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 North Macedonia (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: 193 · 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 193 · 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 March 2019 to 18 March 2019. 12 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 (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.