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MURIGHIOL fire, 2 April 2020 MURIGHIOL

Out · last measured on 5 Apr 2020

The fire started on 2 April 2020 in MURIGHIOL, Romania, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 443 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.

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
443ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
2 Apr 2020 – 5 Apr 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
2 Apr
2020
Danger at start
8
Low · FWI index
Natura 2000
100%
of the perimeter is protected land

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

14°high
56km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 15 Apr.

This area had burned before

24% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 103 ha in 2017, 2 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. MURIGHIOL 2,959 inhabitants · 7.6 km from the town where it started
    443 ha
    0.5 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
2 Apr 9.4 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
3 Apr 11.0 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
4 Apr 12.1 °C 63 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
5 Apr 13.9 °C 30 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
6 Apr after 11.9 °C 31 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
7 Apr after 14.9 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
8 Apr after 14.8 °C 41 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
9 Apr after 19.1 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
10 Apr after 19.9 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
11 Apr after 15.3 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
12 Apr after 15.0 °C 42 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
13 Apr after 13.4 °C 42 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
14 Apr after 18.1 °C 52 % 52 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 18
15 Apr after 12.7 °C 32 % 54 km/h 1.9 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Mar 2020
After · 12 Apr 2020

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 6 April 2020 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1026 µg/m³
3112345678
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 2 April 2020 and 5 April 2020: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 443 hectares (4.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered MURIGHIOL (443 ha, 0.5 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 7.6 km of MURIGHIOL. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 13.9 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, class Moderate.
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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.