Kalinovik fire, February 2025 Kalinovik, Nevesinje
The fire started on 8 February 2025 in Kalinovik, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 773 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 63th largest in Republika Srpska since 2016 (of 391 with a page). Number 10 in Bosnia & Herzegovina in 2025, of 65.
The power measured by the satellite is low (7.2 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…
- Burnt area
- 773ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 8 Feb 2025 – 9 Feb 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 8 Feb
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 3
- in a single hotspot: 7 MW
- Danger at start
- 0
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 21MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
9 Feb 2025 · 21 MW · 3
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.0 mm on 11 Feb.
This area had burned before
93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 440 ha in 2016, 14 ha in 2017, 444 ha in 2019, 399 ha in 2020, 593 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 716 ha that had burned before.
- 593 ha Kalinovik fire, January 2024 3,843 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 444 ha Kalinovik fire, March 2019 851 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 414 ha Nevesinje fire, December 2016 595 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 367 ha Nevesinje fire, February 2020 496 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 14 ha Nevesinje fire, August 2017 142 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1 ha Kalinovik fire, March 2020 3,001 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Kalinovik where it started636 ha reached on 9 Feb1.0 %
-
137 ha0.1 %
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 land96 %
- Agricultural areas3.5 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.12 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 Feb | 8.0 °C | 56 % | 14 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 9 Feb | 8.8 °C | 33 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 10 Feb after | 5.9 °C | 30 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 11 Feb after | 2.7 °C | 68 % | 20 km/h | 7.0 mm | Very low 0 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 6 February 2025 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 3Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,843 haKalinovikJanuary 2024 · 5 days · 3 km away
- 4,094 haNevesinje16 August 2026 · 47 days · 6 km away
- 3,001 haKalinovik18 March 2020 · 6 days · 8 km away
- 2,198 haGacko29 January 2024 · 6 days · 10 km away
- 2,545 haNevesinje7 August 2026 · 33 days · 13 km away
- 4,538 haIstočni MostarApril 2020 · 7 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kalinovik fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 8 February 2025 and 9 February 2025: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 773 hectares (7.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kalinovik (636 ha, 1.0 %); Nevesinje (137 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 8.8 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 16 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 1, class Very low.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Bosnia & Herzegovina (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: 123 · 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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 3 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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 ADM3 (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.