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Lavilledieu fire, July 2022 Lussas, Lavilledieu, Vogüé

Out · last measured on 29 Jul 2022

The fire started on 27 July 2022 in Lavilledieu, France, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,221 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 7 municipalities.

Number 9 in France in 2022, of 49.

Compare with…

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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
1,221ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
27 Jul 2022 – 29 Jul 2022
Municipalities hit
7
communes
Started on
27 Jul
2022
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Natura 2000
62%
of the perimeter is protected land

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

32°high
52km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.7 mm on 5 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 0.8% of the area of London (12 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. Lussas 1,145 inhabitants · 1.6 km from the centre
    382 ha
    23 %
  2. Lavilledieu 2,264 inhabitants · 1.5 km from the centre where it started
    320 ha
    22 %
  3. Vogüé 1,040 inhabitants · 0.5 km from the centre
    306 ha
    26 %
  4. Aubenas 12,416 inhabitants · 3.5 km from the centre
    123 ha
    8.3 %
  5. Saint-Germain 705 inhabitants · 2.5 km from the centre
    61 ha
    6.2 %
  6. Saint-Didier-sous-Aubenas 919 inhabitants · 0.9 km from the centre
    23 ha
    8.5 %
  7. Saint-Privat 1,663 inhabitants · 2.0 km from the centre
    6 ha
    1.0 %

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

  • Other natural land72 %
  • Broadleaved forest24 %
  • Artificial surfaces3.8 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 62 %

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.

Official record

According to BDIFF, a fire of 1,120 ha was recorded in Lussas on 27 July 2022 (the satellite measured 1,221 ha). The record has no coordinates, so it was matched by municipality and date.

BDIFF (Base de Données sur les Incendies de Forêts en France). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.

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)
27 Jul 29.7 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Jul 32.5 °C 22 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Jul 27.2 °C 39 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
30 Jul after 31.3 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
31 Jul after 33.9 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Aug after 35.1 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
2 Aug after 35.3 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
3 Aug after 35.8 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
4 Aug after 36.1 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
5 Aug after 32.8 °C 37 % 34 km/h 5.7 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Jul 2022
After · 5 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 27 July 2022 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak16 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1026 µg/m³
252627282930311
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 France ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lavilledieu fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 27 July 2022 and 29 July 2022: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,221 hectares (12.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 7 municipalities: Lussas (382 ha, 23 %); Lavilledieu (320 ha, 22 %); Vogüé (306 ha, 26 %); Aubenas (123 ha, 8.3 %); Saint-Germain (61 ha, 6.2 %); Saint-Didier-sous-Aubenas (23 ha, 8.5 %); Saint-Privat (6 ha, 1.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 0.5 km of the centre of Vogüé, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of France (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 · 18 · 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 112 · 18.

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.
  • Compared with BDIFF: 1,120 official ha against 1,221 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • 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 ADM5 (Open Data Commons Attribution License 1.0). 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.