Pukë fire, 11 August 2021 Pukë
The fire started on 11 August 2021 in Pukë, Albania, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 806 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 12th largest in Shkodër since 2016 (of 82 with a page). Number 7 in Albania in 2021, of 51.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Pukë · 2018Kukës · 2021Pukë · 2026Pukë · 2021
- Burnt area
- 806ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 10days
- 11 Aug 2021 – 20 Aug 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 11 Aug
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 124
- in a single hotspot: 68 MW
- Danger at start
- 19
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 150MW
- 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 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.9 mm on 25 Aug.
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).
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).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Pukë where it started808 ha reached on 11 Aug0.8 %
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
- Scrub and transitional woodland75 %
- Broadleaved forest14 %
- Other natural land6.7 %
- Coniferous forest3.8 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Aug | 28.8 °C | 31 % | 50 km/h | 1.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 12 Aug | 27.1 °C | 26 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 13 Aug | 26.2 °C | 24 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 14 Aug | 26.8 °C | 27 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 15 Aug | 27.4 °C | 25 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 16 Aug | 28.6 °C | 29 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 17 Aug | 27.8 °C | 29 % | 60 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 18 Aug | 21.2 °C | 46 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 19 Aug | 22.0 °C | 30 % | 59 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 20 Aug | 23.5 °C | 33 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 21 Aug after | 23.8 °C | 32 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 22 Aug after | 24.5 °C | 27 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 23 Aug after | 26.9 °C | 26 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 24 Aug after | 25.1 °C | 31 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 25 Aug after | 21.9 °C | 54 % | 49 km/h | 9.9 mm | Very low 1 |
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 17 August 2021 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 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 · 124Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,099 haPukëSeptember 2018 · 11 days · 11 km away
- 4,419 haKukësAugust 2021 · 20 days · 15 km away
- 4,513 haPukëAugust 2026 · 12 days · 23 km away
- 2,498 haPukë12 August 2021 · 12 days · 25 km away
- 2,455 haMirditë26 August 2024 · 13 days · 28 km away
- 2,069 haMunicipality of GjakovaJuly 2024 · 5 days · 28 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Pukë fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 August 2021 to 20 August 2021 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 August 2021 to 14 August 2021.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 806 hectares (8.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Pukë (808 ha, 0.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 28.8 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Albania (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: 128 · 112 · 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 11 August 2021 to 14 August 2021. 124 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 2020, 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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic). 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.