Praia a Mare fire, July 2017 Praia a Mare, Aieta
The fire started on 16 July 2017 in Praia a Mare, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 409 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 13th largest in Cosenza since 2016 (of 145 with a page). Number 53 in Italy in 2017, of 361.
The power measured by the satellite is low (26.5 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
- 409ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 3days
- 16 Jul 2017 – 18 Jul 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 16 Jul
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 19
- in a single hotspot: 26 MW
- Danger at start
- 13
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 70MW
- 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 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 25 Jul.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
What happened to each town
-
391 ha reached on 17 Jul16 %
-
Aieta 753 inhabitants · 2.6 km from the centre18 ha reached on 18 Jul0.4 %
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
- Sclerophyllous scrub38 %
- Other natural land27 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland15 %
- Coniferous forest13 %
- Agricultural areas4.2 %
- Mixed forest2.0 %
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 were about 0.67 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Jul | 27.1 °C | 25 % | 51 km/h | 1.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 17 Jul | 27.7 °C | 27 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 18 Jul | 28.5 °C | 34 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 19 Jul after | 28.0 °C | 41 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 20 Jul after | 29.2 °C | 40 % | 31 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 24 |
| 21 Jul after | 31.2 °C | 34 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 22 Jul after | 33.0 °C | 27 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 23 Jul after | 31.3 °C | 38 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 24 Jul after | 32.3 °C | 33 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 25 Jul after | 24.8 °C | 52 % | 57 km/h | 1.7 mm | Moderate 12 |
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 18 July 2017 the air beside the fire reached 18 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 · 19Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 643 haSanta Domenica TalaoJuly 2017 · 8 days · 6 km away
- 538 haSanta Domenica TalaoAugust 2023 · 5 days · 6 km away
- 518 haTortora16 July 2017 · 4 days · 6 km away
- 499 haSanta Domenica Talao4 August 2021 · 2 days · 8 km away
- 609 haSanta Domenica TalaoSeptember 2025 · 2 days · 9 km away
- 362 haMorano Calabro6 August 2017 · 6 days · 27 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Praia a Mare fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 16 July 2017 and 18 July 2017: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 409 hectares (4.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Praia a Mare (391 ha, 16 %); Aieta (18 ha, 0.4 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Praia a Mare and reached its centre: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 28.5 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 19 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.