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Pleven fire, September 2019 Плевен · Pleven

Out · last detection 2 Sept 2019, 23:52 UTC

The fire started on 2 September 2019 in Pleven, Bulgaria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 104 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 21th largest in Pleven since 2016 (of 23 with a page). Number 38 in Bulgaria in 2019, of 42.

The power measured by the satellite is low (21.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
104ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
2 Sept 2019 – 3 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
2 Sept
2019
Heat detections
4
in a single hotspot: 21 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Energy released
37MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Sept3 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

2

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
25km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 29 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

  1. Pleven Плевен 108,440 inhabitants · 7.3 km from the town where it started
    104 ha reached on 2 Sept
    0.1 %

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 land62 %
  • Agricultural areas13 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland12 %
  • Broadleaved forest12 %

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 Sept 31.9 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Sept 31.9 °C 26 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Sept after 29.2 °C 43 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
5 Sept after 27.5 °C 47 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
6 Sept after 28.9 °C 38 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
7 Sept after 28.1 °C 38 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
8 Sept after 29.7 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
9 Sept after 28.6 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Sept after 28.4 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Sept after 26.4 °C 47 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
12 Sept after 26.7 °C 41 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
13 Sept after 29.6 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Aug 2019
After · 10 Sept 2019

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 4 September 2019 the air beside the fire reached 17 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak17 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1031 µg/m³
31123456
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 · 4Every 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 Bulgaria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pleven fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 2 September 2019 and 3 September 2019: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 104 hectares (1.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pleven (104 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 7.3 km of Pleven. 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 31.9 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 25 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Bulgaria (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 (Public Domain). 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.