Lăpușnicel fire, 23 March 2022 Lăpușnicel, Mehadica, Iablanița
The fire started on 23 March 2022 in Lăpușnicel, Romania, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,897 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 2th largest in Caraș-Severin since 2016 (of 194 with a page). Number 3 in Romania in 2022, of 186.
The power measured by the satellite is low (18.6 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
- 1,897ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 7days
- 23 Mar 2022 – 29 Mar 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- municipalities
- Started on
- 23 Mar
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 114
- in a single hotspot: 19 MW
- Danger at start
- 3
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 74MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
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: 14.8 mm on 31 Mar.
This area had burned before
34% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 637 ha in 2019, 58 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 644 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Bucharest boundary: geoBoundaries · World Bank (CC BY 4.0).
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).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
1,060 ha reached on 23 Mar14 %
-
735 ha reached on 23 Mar6.3 %
-
Iablanița 1,880 inhabitants · 4.1 km from the centre102 ha reached on 28 Mar0.9 %
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
- Agricultural areas50 %
- Broadleaved forest39 %
- Other natural land6.3 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland5.1 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.24 hectares of 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Mar | 14.2 °C | 28 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 24 Mar | 15.5 °C | 22 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 25 Mar | 12.1 °C | 33 % | 57 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 26 Mar | 14.2 °C | 34 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 27 Mar | 14.3 °C | 42 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 5 |
| 28 Mar | 13.5 °C | 39 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 29 Mar | 15.9 °C | 40 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 30 Mar after | 13.8 °C | 44 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 31 Mar after | 11.6 °C | 68 % | 53 km/h | 14.8 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.
Detections table · 114Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,158 haIablanița6 March 2025 · 4 days · 1 km away
- 2,705 haLăpușnicel20 March 2022 · 9 days · 4 km away
- 1,896 haLăpușnicel6 March 2025 · 5 days · 4 km away
- 1,081 haLăpușnicel17 February 2024 · 3 days · 6 km away
- 778 haPodeniSeptember 2026 · 13 days · 23 km away
- 828 haTopleț14 September 2026 · 27 days · 27 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lăpușnicel fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 March 2022 to 29 March 2022 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 March 2022 to 28 March 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,897 hectares (19.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Lăpușnicel (1,060 ha, 14 %); Mehadica (735 ha, 6.3 %); Iablanița (102 ha, 0.9 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Lăpușnicel and came within 2.8 km of its centre. 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 15.9 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 6, class Low.
- 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 28 March 2022 → 29 March 2022.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 23 March 2022 to 28 March 2022. 114 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.
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.