Skip to content
worldfires
en
HR · Croatia · →

Općina Pakoštane fire, July 2017 Grad Benkovac, Općina Pakoštane

Out · last detection 18 Jul 2017, 12:25 UTC

The fire started on 17 July 2017 in Općina Pakoštane, Croatia, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,041 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 6th largest in Zadar County since 2016 (of 56 with a page). Number 8 in Croatia in 2017, of 78.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Grad Benkovac · 2017Grad Benkovac · 2017Općina Kistanje · 2017Grad Vodice · 2022

Burnt area
2,041ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
17 Jul 2017 – 18 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
17 Jul
2017
Heat detections
81
in a single hotspot: 120 MW
Danger at start
58
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
840MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jul18 Jul
18 Jul 2017

How it evolved, day by day

17 Jul 2017 · 1,438 MW · 46 18 Jul 2017 · 244 MW · 35
17 Jul 18 Jul

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

31°high
46km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.7 mm on 24 Jul.

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 1.3% of the area of London (20 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. Grad Benkovac
    1,161 ha reached on 17 Jul
    1.8 %
  2. Općina Pakoštane where it started
    879 ha reached on 17 Jul
    11 %

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 land74 %
  • Agricultural areas9.6 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland7.3 %
  • Broadleaved forest6.0 %
  • Artificial surfaces2.2 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub0.5 %

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)
17 Jul 30.7 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
18 Jul 29.5 °C 25 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Jul after 29.4 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Jul after 30.1 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
21 Jul after 33.5 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Jul after 31.8 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 43
23 Jul after 31.9 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Jul after 31.8 °C 33 % 58 km/h 9.7 mm Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Jul 2017
After · 25 Jul 2017

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 19 July 2017 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
PM1019 µg/m³
15161718192021
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)

Detections table · 81Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Croatia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Općina Pakoštane fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 17 July 2017 and 18 July 2017: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,041 hectares (20.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Grad Benkovac (1,161 ha, 1.8 %); Općina Pakoštane (879 ha, 11 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.7 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Croatia (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 · 193 · 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 · 193.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 81 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.

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-ShareAlike 2.0). 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.