Pyrgos fire, 4 August 2021 Πύργου · Olympia, Pyrgos, Gortynia
The fire started on 4 August 2021 in Pyrgos, Greece, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 18,400 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.
It is the largest fire in Western Greece since 2016 (of 36 with a page). Number 2 in Greece in 2021, of 45.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 18,400ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 9days
- 4 Aug 2021 – 12 Aug 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 4
- municipalities
- Started on
- 4 Aug
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 660
- in a single hotspot: 322 MW
- Danger at start
- 61
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 3.4GW
- 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 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 19 Aug.
This area had burned before
1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 133 ha in 2020.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Athens boundary: geoBoundaries · geoBoundaries, Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0).
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
-
Olympia Αρχαίας Ολυμπίας8,911 ha reached on 5 Aug13 %
-
5,592 ha reached on 5 Aug11 %
-
Gortynia Γορτυνίας3,896 ha reached on 7 Aug3.8 %
-
Ilida Ήλιδας41 ha reached on 6 Aug0.1 %
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 areas62 %
- Mixed forest13 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland13 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub8.4 %
- Coniferous forest2.2 %
- Broadleaved forest1.0 %
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 were about 42 hectares of built-up land and about 2,600 residents (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
Checked against the press
Checked on 30 September 2026We checked this page against 4 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- Fotia stin Archaia Olympia · Ancient Olympia fire · Ilia-Gortynia fire
Sources
- Fotia stin Archaia Olympia - Katastrafikan 140.000 stremmata gis - To 70% itan kalliergisimes ektaseis — TA NEA, 19 August 2021
- Fotia stin Archaia Olympia: Machi me purino metopo stin periohi Helidoni - Dothike entoli ekkenosis — Protothema, 5 August 2021
- Suppression versus prevention - the disastrous forest fire season of 2021 in Greece — International Association of Wildland Fire
- Anaskopisi 2021: To kalokairi tis thlipsis - Oi megales pyrkagies poy esvisan ektaseis apo ton xarti — Newsbomb
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Aug | 39.8 °C | 15 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 5 Aug | 37.9 °C | 17 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 6 Aug | 31.4 °C | 35 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 7 Aug | 33.5 °C | 34 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 8 Aug | 33.7 °C | 35 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 9 Aug | 35.3 °C | 31 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 10 Aug | 38.2 °C | 23 % | 45 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 44 |
| 11 Aug | 36.3 °C | 31 % | 43 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 37 |
| 12 Aug | 35.1 °C | 28 % | 31 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 34 |
| 13 Aug after | 34.5 °C | 26 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 14 Aug after | 33.9 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 15 Aug after | 34.7 °C | 20 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 16 Aug after | 34.8 °C | 25 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 17 Aug after | 32.9 °C | 35 % | 42 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 39 |
| 18 Aug after | 33.6 °C | 29 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 19 Aug after | 34.2 °C | 32 % | 40 km/h | 1.0 mm | High 30 |
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.
Detections table · 660Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 777 haOlympia Αρχαίας ΟλυμπίαςJuly 2022 · 2 days · 12 km away
- 330 haPyrgos ΠύργουJuly 2020 · 2 days · 13 km away
- 819 haPyrgos ΠύργουAugust 2025 · 2 days · 14 km away
- 431 haPyrgos Πύργου6 August 2021 · 1 day · 22 km away
- 293 haErymanthos ΕρυμάνθουJuly 2021 · 2 days · 26 km away
- 4,336 haErymanthos ΕρυμάνθουJune 2024 · 2 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Pyrgos fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 4 August 2021 and 12 August 2021: 9 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 18,400 hectares (184.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 4 municipalities: Olympia (8,911 ha, 13 %); Pyrgos (5,592 ha, 11 %); Gortynia (3,896 ha, 3.8 %); Ilida (41 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.8 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, class Extreme.
- 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.
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. 660 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Checked against news and agencies: 4 confirmed sources.
- 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 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.