Roccella Ionica fire, 21 July 2025 Roccella Ionica, Caulonia
The fire started on 21 July 2025 in Roccella Ionica, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,549 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 4th largest in Reggio di Calabria since 2016 (of 101 with a page). Number 2 in Italy in 2025, of 216.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,549ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 5days
- 21 Jul 2025 – 25 Jul 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 21 Jul
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 95
- in a single hotspot: 316 MW
- Danger at start
- 40
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 686MW
- 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 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 30 Jul.
This area had burned before
39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 129 ha in 2017, 82 ha in 2018, 167 ha in 2019, 86 ha in 2020, 69 ha in 2021, 289 ha in 2022, 75 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 603 ha that had burned before.
- 259 ha Roccella Ionica fire, July 2022 269 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 146 ha Roccella Ionica fire, August 2019 168 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 129 ha Roccella Ionica fire, September 2017 142 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Roccella Ionica where it started1,013 ha reached on 21 Jul27 %
-
Caulonia 6,783 inhabitants · 1.7 km from the centre537 ha reached on 22 Jul5.4 %
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
- Agricultural areas60 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland20 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub9.3 %
- Other natural land8.5 %
- Broadleaved forest2.4 %
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 were about 3.5 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Jul | 35.5 °C | 24 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 22 Jul | 38.0 °C | 18 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 23 Jul | 35.4 °C | 21 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 24 Jul | 30.1 °C | 20 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 25 Jul | 33.7 °C | 21 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 26 Jul after | 34.1 °C | 30 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 27 Jul after | 30.8 °C | 34 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 28 Jul after | 30.2 °C | 35 % | 49 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 47 |
| 29 Jul after | 28.3 °C | 42 % | 50 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 34 |
| 30 Jul after | 27.1 °C | 49 % | 34 km/h | 1.1 mm | Moderate 17 |
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 25 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 34 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 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 · 95Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 447 haCauloniaAugust 2021 · 3 days · 5 km away
- 848 haSan Giovanni di GeraceAugust 2021 · 6 days · 8 km away
- 1,652 haMammolaAugust 2021 · 8 days · 12 km away
- 581 haBadolatoAugust 2021 · 13 days · 26 km away
- 497 haArdoreAugust 2024 · 3 days · 26 km away
- 549 haIsca sullo IonioAugust 2021 · 4 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Roccella Ionica fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 July 2025 to 25 July 2025 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 July 2025 to 23 July 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,549 hectares (15.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Roccella Ionica (1,013 ha, 27 %); Caulonia (537 ha, 5.4 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 1.7 km of the centre of Caulonia, 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 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 21 July 2025 to 23 July 2025. 95 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.