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Jiana fire, 9 August 2021 Pătulele, Jiana

Out · last detection 10 Aug 2021, 12:01 UTC

The fire started on 9 August 2021 in Jiana, Romania, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 488 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 10th largest in Mehedinți since 2016 (of 87 with a page). Number 3 in Romania in 2021, of 23.

The power measured by the satellite is low (10.2 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…

Suggestions: Jiana · 2021Devesel · 2021Negotin Municipality · 2024Kladovo Municipality · 2026

Burnt area
488ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
9 Aug 2021 – 12 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
9 Aug
2021
Heat detections
6
in a single hotspot: 10 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
21MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Aug12 Aug
10 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

9 Aug 2021 · 26 MW · 4 10 Aug 2021 · 16 MW · 2
9 Aug 10 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

39°high
46km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 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.

What happened to each town

  1. Pătulele
    321 ha reached on 10 Aug
    3.0 %
  2. Jiana where it started
    167 ha reached on 9 Aug
    1.6 %

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

  • Broadleaved forest57 %
  • Agricultural areas43 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %

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)
9 Aug 38.7 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Aug 37.0 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Aug 36.0 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Aug 35.7 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
13 Aug after 33.7 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
14 Aug after 34.6 °C 27 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
15 Aug after 36.5 °C 23 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Aug after 38.9 °C 10 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Aug after 36.8 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.4 mm Extreme 56
18 Aug after 28.3 °C 35 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Aug after 30.4 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Aug after 31.9 °C 22 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Aug after 32.5 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
22 Aug after 33.3 °C 21 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Aug 2021
After · 19 Aug 2021

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 · 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 Romania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Jiana fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 9 August 2021 and 12 August 2021: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 488 hectares (4.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pătulele (321 ha, 3.0 %); Jiana (167 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Romania (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.

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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 (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.