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Pyrgos fire, 6 August 2021 Πύργου · Pyrgos

Out · last detection 6 Aug 2021, 11:34 UTC

The fire started on 6 August 2021 in Pyrgos, Greece, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 431 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 11th largest in Western Greece since 2016 (of 36 with a page). Number 19 in Greece in 2021, of 45.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pyrgos · 2025Pyrgos · 2020Olympia · 2022Pyrgos · 2021

Burnt area
431ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
6 Aug 2021 – 6 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
6 Aug
2021
Heat detections
25
in a single hotspot: 37 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
380MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Aug6 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

6 Aug 2021 · 380 MW · 25

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
51km/h · peak gust
38%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 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. Pyrgos Πύργου 36,179 inhabitants where it started
    433 ha reached on 6 Aug
    0.9 %

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

  • Agricultural areas77 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland22 %

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)
6 Aug 31.5 °C 38 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Aug after 32.7 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Aug after 33.0 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Aug after 33.7 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Aug after 36.2 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Aug after 34.7 °C 39 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Aug after 36.0 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Aug after 35.3 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Aug after 34.6 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
15 Aug after 35.1 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Aug after 34.5 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Jul 2021
After · 13 Aug 2021

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 5 August 2021 the air beside the fire reached 72 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak72 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1093 µg/m³
456789
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 · 25Every 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 Greece ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pyrgos fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 6 August 2021 and 6 August 2021: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 431 hectares (4.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pyrgos (433 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.5 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Greece (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 · 199 · 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.

RSS Changes to this page

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 · 199.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 25 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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 ADM3 (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication). 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.