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Regalbuto fire, July 2021 Regalbuto, Troina, Gagliano Castelferrato

Out · last detection 5 Jul 2021, 00:12 UTC

The fire started on 2 July 2021 in Regalbuto, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,762 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in Enna since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 4 in Italy in 2021, of 291.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nicosia · 2016Randazzo · 2019Enna · 2021Santa Domenica Vittoria · 2021

Burnt area
3,762ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
2 Jul 2021 – 5 Jul 2021
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
2 Jul
2021
Heat detections
92
in a single hotspot: 78 MW
Danger at start
58
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
315MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jul5 Jul
5 Jul 2021

How it evolved, day by day

2 Jul 2021 · 101 MW · 5 3 Jul 2021 · 742 MW · 57 4 Jul 2021 · 413 MW · 28 5 Jul 2021 · 5 MW · 2
2 Jul 3 Jul 4 Jul 5 Jul

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
56km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 30 ha in 2017, 35 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (38 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Regalbuto 6,724 inhabitants · 3.1 km from the centre where it started
    2,591 ha reached on 2 Jul
    15 %
  2. Troina 8,550 inhabitants · 3.0 km from the centre
    1,102 ha reached on 3 Jul
    6.6 %
  3. Gagliano Castelferrato 3,266 inhabitants · 4.1 km from the centre
    78 ha reached on 4 Jul
    1.4 %

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 scrub43 %
  • Agricultural areas35 %
  • Other natural land18 %
  • Broadleaved forest2.5 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland1.4 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 0 %

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)
2 Jul 30.2 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
3 Jul 28.7 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Jul 31.9 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
5 Jul 25.8 °C 31 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
6 Jul after 31.5 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Jul after 32.8 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Jul after 32.3 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Jul after 33.8 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Jul after 30.6 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Jul after 27.5 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
12 Jul after 30.6 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Jul after 33.5 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
14 Jul after 25.6 °C 39 % 48 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
15 Jul after 25.7 °C 31 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Jun 2021
After · 12 Jul 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 3 July 2021 the air beside the fire reached 45 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak45 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1085 µg/m³
3012345678
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 · 92Every 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 Italy ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Regalbuto fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 2 July 2021 and 5 July 2021: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,762 hectares (37.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Regalbuto (2,591 ha, 15 %); Troina (1,102 ha, 6.6 %); Gagliano Castelferrato (78 ha, 1.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 3.0 km of the centre of Troina, the closest of the areas it touched. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.9 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, class Extreme.
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.

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 · 1515.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 92 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 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.