Pietrapaola fire, 25 August 2017 Pietrapaola
The fire started on 25 August 2017 in Pietrapaola, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 123 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 110th largest in Cosenza since 2016 (of 145 with a page). Number 292 in Italy in 2017, of 361.
The power measured by the satellite is low (29.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 123ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 4days
- 25 Aug 2017 – 28 Aug 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 25 Aug
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 4
- in a single hotspot: 30 MW
- Danger at start
- 34
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 111MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
28 Aug 2017 · 111 MW · 4
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 30 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
What happened to each town
-
Pietrapaola where it started124 ha reached on 28 Aug2.4 %
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
- Broadleaved forest42 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland26 %
- Agricultural areas17 %
- Other natural land14 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2015Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Aug | 30.4 °C | 24 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 27 Aug | 31.5 °C | 17 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 28 Aug | 32.2 °C | 34 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 29 Aug after | 29.5 °C | 41 % | 32 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 30 |
| 30 Aug after | 27.7 °C | 37 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 31 Aug after | 29.6 °C | 37 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 1 Sept after | 29.8 °C | 36 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 2 Sept after | 32.0 °C | 33 % | 35 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 30 |
| 3 Sept after | 26.1 °C | 40 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 4 Sept after | 23.5 °C | 44 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 5 Sept after | 24.8 °C | 41 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 6 Sept after | 27.5 °C | 29 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 7 Sept after | 26.9 °C | 43 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 28 August 2017 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 4Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Pietrapaola fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 August 2017 to 28 August 2017 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 August 2017 to 28 August 2017.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 123 hectares (1.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Pietrapaola (124 ha, 2.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.2 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Italy (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 · 1515 · 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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 26 August 2017 to 28 August 2017. 4 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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 ADM4 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License). 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.