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Murighiol fire, 1 March 2019 Murighiol

Out · last measured on 1 Mar 2019

The fire started on 1 March 2019 in Murighiol, Romania, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,310 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

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.

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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
1,310ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
1 Mar 2019 – 1 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
1 Mar
2019
Danger at start
4
Very low · FWI index
Natura 2000
100%
of the perimeter is protected land

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

12°high
44km/h · peak gust
41%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.8% of the area of London (13 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. Murighiol 2,959 inhabitants · 0.8 km from the centre where it started
    1,311 ha reached on 1 Mar
    1.6 %

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 %

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)
1 Mar 12.5 °C 41 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
2 Mar after 6.7 °C 40 % 46 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.

Before · 22 Feb 2019
After · 8 Mar 2019

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 1 March 2019 the air beside the fire reached 65 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 27: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak65 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1075 µg/m³
27281234
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 Romania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Murighiol fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 1 March 2019 and 1 March 2019: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,310 hectares (13.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Murighiol (1,311 ha, 1.6 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Murighiol and came within 0.8 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 12.5 °C, humidity dropped to 41 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 4, 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.

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.

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.
  • Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.

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 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.