Roccacasale fire, 20 August 2026 Pratola Peligna, Roccacasale, Salle
The fire started on 20 August 2026 in Roccacasale, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 598 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 3th largest in L'Aquila since 2016 (of 20 with a page). Number 31 in Italy in 2026, of 232.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 598ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- ≈ 13days
- 20 Aug 2026 – 1 Sept 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- municipalities
- Started on
- 20 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 104
- in a single hotspot: 88 MW
- Danger at start
- 52
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 289MW
- 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 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
14% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 83 ha in 2017, 23 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 85 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Rome boundary: geoBoundaries · ISTAT, National Institute of Statistics (CC BY 3.0).
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
-
Pratola Peligna 7,039 inhabitants · 2.9 km from the centre359 ha reached on 21 Aug13 %
-
234 ha reached on 20 Aug14 %
-
Salle 268 inhabitants · 5.1 km from the centre5 ha0.2 %
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
- Coniferous forest45 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland36 %
- Mixed forest9.1 %
- Other natural land6.8 %
- Broadleaved forest2.5 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 99 %
- LIC Maiella IT7140203
- ZEPA Parco Nazionale della Maiella IT7140129
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Aug | 40.0 °C | 15 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 28 Aug | 40.5 °C | 12 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 29 Aug | 33.8 °C | 23 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 30 Aug | 32.1 °C | 27 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 31 Aug | 34.6 °C | 29 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 1 Sept | 33.1 °C | 24 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 2 Sept after | 34.5 °C | 17 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 3 Sept after | 30.5 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 4 Sept after | 32.2 °C | 23 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 5 Sept after | 36.5 °C | 16 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 6 Sept after | 32.2 °C | 26 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
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 30 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 62 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 36: 2.4 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 · 104Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 432 haPratola PelignaJuly 2023 · 5 days · 2 km away
- 356 haRoccacasale16 August 2026 · 16 days · 3 km away
- 2,039 haSulmonaAugust 2017 · 13 days · 4 km away
- 370 haCorfinioAugust 2026 · 20 days · 4 km away
- 376 haRaianoAugust 2017 · 5 days · 10 km away
- 315 haCastiglione a CasauriaJuly 2017 · 3 days · 12 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Roccacasale fire last?
- The official perimeter only gives the start date (27 August 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 1 September 2026 (13 days from 20 August 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 598 hectares (6.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Pratola Peligna (359 ha, 13 %); Roccacasale (234 ha, 14 %); Salle (5 ha, 0.2 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Roccacasale and came within 0.5 km of its centre. 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 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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.
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.
- The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 104 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 2025, 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.