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Kurbin fire, August 2022 Kurbin, Lezhë, Mat

Out · last measured on 5 Aug 2022

The fire started on 2 August 2022 in Kurbin, Albania, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 640 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 8th largest in Lezhë since 2016 (of 30 with a page). Number 4 in Albania in 2022, of 50.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mat · 2026Lezhë · 2024Shkodër · 2020Dibër · 2025

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
640ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
2 Aug 2022 – 5 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
2 Aug
2022
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

33°high
35km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 12 Aug.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.4% of the area of London (6.4 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

  1. Kurbin where it started
    640 ha
    2.6 %
  2. Lezhë
    2 ha
    0.0 %
  3. Mat
    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

  • Broadleaved forest99 %
  • Agricultural areas0.6 %

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)
2 Aug 32.2 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Aug 32.0 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Aug 33.0 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Aug 32.5 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Aug after 32.9 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Aug after 33.9 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Aug after 33.2 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Aug after 32.4 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
10 Aug after 32.0 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Aug after 31.3 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Aug after 29.9 °C 35 % 24 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Jul 2022
After · 12 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 8 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak27 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1033 µg/m³
Optical depth0.36
3112345678
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Albania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kurbin fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 2 August 2022 and 5 August 2022: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 640 hectares (6.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Kurbin (640 ha, 2.6 %); Lezhë (2 ha, 0.0 %); Mat (0 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Albania (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: 128 · 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 128 · 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. No 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 2.5 Generic). 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.