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MURIGHIOL fire, 15 February 2022 MURIGHIOL

Out · last measured on 15 Feb 2022

The fire started on 15 February 2022 in MURIGHIOL, Romania, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 165 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
165ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
15 Feb 2022 – 15 Feb 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
15 Feb
2022
Danger at start
2
Very low · FWI index
Natura 2000
100%
of the perimeter is protected land

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

10°high
32km/h · peak gust
62%lowest humidity

It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 20 Feb.

This area had burned before

95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 114 ha in 2017, 99 ha in 2019, 147 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 156 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. MURIGHIOL 2,959 inhabitants · 11.8 km from the town where it started
    165 ha
    0.2 %

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)
15 Feb 9.6 °C 62 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
16 Feb after 12.5 °C 63 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
17 Feb after 16.2 °C 45 % 47 km/h 0.1 mm Very low 5
18 Feb after 11.9 °C 56 % 55 km/h 0.3 mm Low 6
19 Feb after 13.6 °C 42 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
20 Feb after 9.0 °C 57 % 23 km/h 1.6 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Feb 2022
After · 22 Feb 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 17 February 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
PM1028 µg/m³
131415161718
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 15 February 2022 and 15 February 2022: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 165 hectares (1.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered MURIGHIOL (165 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 11.8 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 9.6 °C, humidity dropped to 62 % and gusts hit 32 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

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.