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BG · Bulgaria ·

Haskovo fire, August 2022 Хасково · Harmanli, Haskovo

Out · last detection 10 Aug 2022, 12:06 UTC

The fire started on 10 August 2022 in Haskovo, Bulgaria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 130 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 43th largest in Haskovo since 2016 (of 46 with a page). Number 34 in Bulgaria in 2022, of 41.

The power measured by the satellite is low (20.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
130ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
10 Aug 2022 – 10 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
10 Aug
2022
Heat detections
6
in a single hotspot: 21 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
55MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Aug10 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

10 Aug 2022 · 55 MW · 6

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
50km/h · peak gust
36%lowest humidity

It had gone 22 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.8 mm on 14 Aug.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Harmanli Харманли 22,716 inhabitants · 8.3 km from the centre
    130 ha reached on 10 Aug
    0.2 %
  2. Haskovo Хасково 78,235 inhabitants · 22.3 km from the centre where it started
    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

  • Other natural land46 %
  • Agricultural areas29 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland24 %
  • Broadleaved forest1.5 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 94 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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 31.3 °C 36 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Aug after 31.8 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Aug after 32.3 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Aug after 31.4 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Aug after 30.4 °C 42 % 35 km/h 5.8 mm Low 7

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 44.9, a minimum humidity of 36% and 22 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 22.

FWI at the start 44.9
Minimum humidity 36 %
Days without rain 22
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Svilengrad fire, August 2017
540 ha 3 days FWI 49.9 Min. humidity 36 % 62 km away, in 2017

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 3.2 mm on 21 Aug.

What happened to them

2 days
median duration
413 ha
median area
23 %
went past 1,000 ha
1.9 mm
rain at the end (median; 16 of 22 had it)

It stayed below its twins: 130 ha against a median of 413 ha. It lasted 1 day, against 2 days.

In 6 of 22, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.9 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

5.8 mmfirst rain
14 Aug4 days after it ended
50km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 10 Aug, and on 14 Aug 5.8 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 16 of 22, with a median of 1.9 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Aug 2022
After · 17 Aug 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 13 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 10 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak10 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1018 µg/m³
Optical depth0.28
8 Aug10 Aug12 Aug
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 · 6Every 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 Haskovo fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 10 August 2022 and 10 August 2022: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 130 hectares (1.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Harmanli (130 ha, 0.2 %); Haskovo (0 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 8.3 km of the centre of Harmanli, 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 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 22. Their median duration was 2 days and their median area 413 ha; 23 % went past 1,000 ha. In 6 of 22, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.9 mm.

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.

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. 6 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 2020, 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 (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.