Murighiol fire, 20 February 2019 Murighiol, Sfântu Gheorghe
The fire started on 20 February 2019 in Murighiol, Romania, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 786 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
This record is fire in the reed beds of the Danube Delta, not a forest fire. Thousands of hectares of reed burn in the delta every year, mostly between January and April, and many of these burns are deliberate. That is why it is left out of the fire rankings.
The power measured by the satellite is low (21.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
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- Burnt area
- 786ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 3days
- 20 Feb 2019 – 22 Feb 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 20 Feb
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 22
- in a single hotspot: 22 MW
- Danger at start
- 2
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 65MW
- 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 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 2 Mar.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
780 ha reached on 20 Feb1.0 %
-
Sfântu Gheorghe 639 inhabitants · 23.4 km from the centre4 ha0.0 %
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 land100 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %
- LIC Delta Dunării ROSCI0065
- ZEPA Delta Dunării și Complexul Razim - Sinoie ROSPA0031
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Feb | 11.5 °C | 63 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 21 Feb | 10.5 °C | 45 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 22 Feb | 6.6 °C | 67 % | 62 km/h | 4.9 mm | Very low 0 |
| 23 Feb after | -1.8 °C | 39 % | 65 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very low 1 |
| 24 Feb after | -0.4 °C | 38 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 25 Feb after | 5.7 °C | 32 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 26 Feb after | 7.8 °C | 49 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 27 Feb after | 5.4 °C | 63 % | 56 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very low 3 |
| 28 Feb after | 10.3 °C | 53 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 1 Mar after | 12.3 °C | 47 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 2 Mar after | 6.5 °C | 41 % | 43 km/h | 1.4 mm | Very low 1 |
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 22 February 2019 the air beside the fire reached 56 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 30: 2.0 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 · 22Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,420 haSfântu Gheorghe8 March 2021 · 2 days · 7 km away
- 5,103 haSfântu Gheorghe20 February 2019 · 1 day · 9 km away
- 10,396 haSfântu Gheorghe10 March 2019 · 8 days · 19 km away
- 10,147 haSfântu Gheorghe18 February 2025 · 6 days · 20 km away
- 9,392 haSfântu Gheorghe18 March 2022 · 5 days · 25 km away
- 10,843 haSfântu GheorgheJanuary 2025 · 5 days · 30 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Murighiol fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 20 February 2019 and 22 February 2019: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 786 hectares (7.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Murighiol (780 ha, 1.0 %); Sfântu Gheorghe (4 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Murighiol and came within 12.5 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 11.5 °C, humidity dropped to 45 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 2, 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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 22 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.
- Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.
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.