Podeni fire, September 2026 Podeni, Băile Herculane
The fire started on 28 September 2026 in Podeni, Romania, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 778 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 4th largest in Mehedinți since 2016 (of 87 with a page). Number 2 in Romania in 2026, of 59.
The power measured by the satellite is low (16.6 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
- 778ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 13days
- 28 Sept 2026 – 10 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 28 Sept
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 85
- in a single hotspot: 17 MW
- Danger at start
- 8
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 22MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
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 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 14.3 mm on 11 Oct.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Bucharest boundary: geoBoundaries · World Bank (CC BY 4.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Podeni where it started517 ha reached on 1 Oct6.2 %
-
262 ha reached on 28 Sept3.7 %
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 forest46 %
- Mixed forest28 %
- Agricultural areas25 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland0.9 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %
- ZEPA + LIC Domogled - Valea Cernei ROSAC0069 · ROSPA0035
- LIC Platoul Mehedinți ROSAC0198
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Sept | 17.6 °C | 37 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 29 Sept | 16.2 °C | 47 % | 24 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 9 |
| 30 Sept | 15.5 °C | 44 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 1 Oct | 15.0 °C | 40 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 2 Oct | 15.6 °C | 37 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 3 Oct | 15.6 °C | 39 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 4 Oct | 18.1 °C | 24 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 5 Oct | 19.0 °C | 22 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 6 Oct | 19.1 °C | 26 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 7 Oct | 17.7 °C | 26 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 8 Oct | 17.6 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 9 Oct | 17.3 °C | 62 % | 45 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 10 Oct | 17.4 °C | 58 % | 34 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 11 Oct after | 13.2 °C | 87 % | 40 km/h | 14.3 mm | Very low 0 |
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 7 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 33 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily 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 · 85Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 828 haTopleț14 September 2026 · 27 days · 18 km away
- 1,897 haLăpușnicel23 March 2022 · 7 days · 23 km away
- 1,158 haIablanița6 March 2025 · 4 days · 23 km away
- 2,705 haLăpușnicel20 March 2022 · 9 days · 25 km away
- 1,896 haLăpușnicel6 March 2025 · 5 days · 25 km away
- 1,081 haLăpușnicel17 February 2024 · 3 days · 26 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Podeni fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (4 October 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 10 October 2026 (13 days from 28 September 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 778 hectares (7.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Podeni (517 ha, 6.2 %); Băile Herculane (262 ha, 3.7 %).
- Is the Podeni fire still active?
- No fire detections since 10 Oct 2026, 00:30 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 19.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.
- 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Name: Băile Herculane → Podeni.
- Name: Podeni → Băile Herculane.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 85 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.
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.