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Pleven fire, July 2023 Плевен · Pleven

Out · last detection 30 Jul 2023, 10:40 UTC

The fire started on 30 July 2023 in Pleven, Bulgaria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 101 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 23th largest in Pleven since 2016 (of 23 with a page). Number 25 in Bulgaria in 2023, of 25.

The power measured by the satellite is low (9.5 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
101ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
30 Jul 2023 – 30 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
30 Jul
2023
Heat detections
1
in a single hotspot: 10 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Energy released
10MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jul30 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

30

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
18km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.7 mm on 31 Jul.

This area had burned before

78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 79 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Pleven Плевен 108,440 inhabitants · 7.1 km from the town where it started
    101 ha reached on 30 Jul
    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 land64 %
  • Agricultural areas28 %
  • Broadleaved forest8.1 %

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)
30 Jul 36.4 °C 20 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 Jul after 30.6 °C 41 % 39 km/h 5.7 mm Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Jul 2023
After · 6 Aug 2023

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 31 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 13 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak13 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1017 µg/m³
Optical depth0.57
2829303112
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 · 1Every 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 30 July 2023 and 30 July 2023: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 101 hectares (1.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pleven (101 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 7.1 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 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 18 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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.