Lăpușnicel fire, 17 February 2024 Lăpușnicel, Prigor
The fire started on 17 February 2024 in Lăpușnicel, Romania, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,081 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 6th largest in Caraș-Severin since 2016 (of 194 with a page). Number 2 in Romania in 2024, of 92.
The power measured by the satellite is low (6.1 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
- 1,081ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 3days
- 17 Feb 2024 – 19 Feb 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 17 Feb
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 1
- in a single hotspot: 6 MW
- Danger at start
- 0
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 6MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
17 Feb 2024 · 6 MW · 1
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 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.0 mm on 21 Feb.
This area had burned before
92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 88 ha in 2019, 278 ha in 2020, 190 ha in 2021, 910 ha in 2022, 20 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 993 ha that had burned before.
- 910 ha Lăpușnicel fire, March 2022 2,705 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 278 ha Lăpușnicel fire, March 2020 455 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 190 ha Prigor fire, February 2021 228 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 88 ha Lăpușnicel fire, April 2019 273 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).
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
-
803 ha reached on 17 Feb11 %
-
Prigor 2,078 inhabitants · 4.3 km from the centre278 ha0.9 %
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 areas72 %
- Broadleaved forest28 %
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 0.22 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Feb | 9.3 °C | 58 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 18 Feb | 9.4 °C | 62 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 19 Feb | 5.5 °C | 78 % | 19 km/h | 0.8 mm | Very low 0 |
| 20 Feb after | 6.1 °C | 79 % | 26 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very low 0 |
| 21 Feb after | 5.6 °C | 86 % | 32 km/h | 3.0 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 20 February 2024 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 1Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,705 haLăpușnicel20 March 2022 · 9 days · 2 km away
- 1,896 haLăpușnicel6 March 2025 · 5 days · 2 km away
- 1,897 haLăpușnicel23 March 2022 · 7 days · 6 km away
- 1,158 haIablanița6 March 2025 · 4 days · 7 km away
- 828 haTopleț14 September 2026 · 27 days · 26 km away
- 778 haPodeniSeptember 2026 · 13 days · 26 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lăpușnicel fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 17 February 2024 and 19 February 2024: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,081 hectares (10.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Lăpușnicel (803 ha, 11 %); Prigor (278 ha, 0.9 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Lăpușnicel and reached its centre: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 9.4 °C, humidity dropped to 58 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 0, class Very 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 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. One Suomi-NPP VIIRS detection 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 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.