How long did the Grad Vrlika fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 August 2017 to 19 August 2017 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 August 2017 to 15 August 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,232 hectares (32.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Općina Muć (2,048 ha, 9.3 %); Općina Ružić (1,187 ha, 7.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Croatia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

HR · Croatia · 2017-08-10 → 2017-08-19

Grad Vrlika fire, August 2017 Općina Muć, Općina Ružić

Out · last detection 19 Aug 2017, 12:26 UTC

The fire started on 10 August 2017 in Grad Vrlika, Croatia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,232 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 5th largest in Split-Dalmatia since 2016 (of 49 with a page). Number 5 in Croatia in 2017, of 78.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Grad Vrlika · 2020 Dinara · 2020 Livno · 2017 Grad Knin · 2026

Burnt area: 3,232ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 10days; 10 Aug 2017 – 19 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 10 Aug; 2017
Heat detections: 162; in a single hotspot: 70 MW
Danger at start: 28; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 176MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Aug19 Aug

Play back 19 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

10 Aug 15 Aug 16 Aug 17 Aug 18 Aug 19 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

55km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 28 Aug.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (32 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

Općina Muć

2,048 ha reached on 15 Aug

9.3 %
Općina Ružić

1,187 ha reached on 16 Aug

7.2 %

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 land58 %
Scrub and transitional woodland38 %
Sclerophyllous scrub2.0 %
Broadleaved forest1.9 %
Agricultural areas0.8 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 74 %

LIC Svilaja HR2000922

Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015

Built-up area0.76 ha

Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.76 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (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)
10 Aug	34.2 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
11 Aug	29.6 °C	37 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
12 Aug	21.4 °C	49 %	34 km/h	16.9 mm	Very low 1
13 Aug	23.2 °C	42 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
14 Aug	25.9 °C	36 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
15 Aug	27.7 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
16 Aug	28.8 °C	37 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
17 Aug	29.0 °C	37 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
18 Aug	29.9 °C	34 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
19 Aug	29.6 °C	32 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
20 Aug after	25.2 °C	46 %	46 km/h	0.5 mm	High 22
21 Aug after	23.5 °C	33 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
22 Aug after	22.9 °C	30 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
23 Aug after	25.4 °C	30 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
24 Aug after	27.4 °C	27 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
25 Aug after	29.4 °C	30 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
26 Aug after	30.2 °C	27 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
27 Aug after	29.9 °C	31 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 27
28 Aug after	29.9 °C	31 %	34 km/h	1.6 mm	Moderate 15

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Aug 2017

After · 26 Aug 2017

Before After

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 · 162Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Croatia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Grad Vrlika fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 August 2017 to 19 August 2017 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 August 2017 to 15 August 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,232 hectares (32.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Općina Muć (2,048 ha, 9.3 %); Općina Ružić (1,187 ha, 7.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Croatia (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 · 193 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Hrvatska vatrogasna zajednica ↗
Civilna zaštita ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 15 August 2017 → 19 August 2017.

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 · 193.

How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 10 August 2017 to 15 August 2017. 162 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.

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-ShareAlike 2.0). 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.

Where it burned