How long did the Murighiol fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 9 October 2020 and 9 October 2020: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,617 hectares (16.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Murighiol (1,619 ha, 2.0 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The closest fire to a town centre came within 7.8 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 22.1 °C, humidity dropped to 85 % and gusts hit 42 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.

RO · Romania · 2020-10-09 → 2020-10-09

Murighiol fire, 9 October 2020 Murighiol

Out · last measured on 9 Oct 2020

The fire started on 9 October 2020 in Murighiol, Romania, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,617 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.

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: 1,617ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 1day; 9 Oct 2020 – 9 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 9 Oct; 2020
Danger at start: 0; Very low · FWI index
Natura 2000: 0%; of the perimeter is protected land

The weather it burned in

22°high

42km/h · peak gust

85%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 10 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1% of the area of London (16 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

Murighiol 2,959 inhabitants · 7.8 km from the town where it started

1,619 ha

2.0 %

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

Agricultural areas100 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 0 %

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)
9 Oct	22.1 °C	85 %	42 km/h	30.9 mm	Very low 0
10 Oct after	21.3 °C	68 %	23 km/h	2.0 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Oct 2020

After · 16 Oct 2020

Before After

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 8 October 2020 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1039 µg/m³

WHO 15

789101112

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 9 October 2020 and 9 October 2020: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,617 hectares (16.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Murighiol (1,619 ha, 2.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The closest fire to a town centre came within 7.8 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 22.1 °C, humidity dropped to 85 % and gusts hit 42 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

IGSU · Inspectoratul General pentru Situații de Urgență ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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.

Where it burned