San Luca fire, 1 August 2021 San Luca, Samo
The fire started on 1 August 2021 in San Luca, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 850 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 9th largest in Reggio di Calabria since 2016 (of 101 with a page). Number 21 in Italy in 2021, of 291.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 850ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 13days
- 1 Aug 2021 – 13 Aug 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 1 Aug
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 63
- in a single hotspot: 78 MW
- Danger at start
- 26
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 195MW
- 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 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 21 Aug.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
756 ha reached on 3 Aug7.2 %
-
Samo 709 inhabitants · 6.9 km from the centre96 ha reached on 11 Aug1.9 %
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
- Mixed forest46 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland36 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub11 %
- Other natural land6.1 %
- Broadleaved forest1.6 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 31 %
- ZEPA Parco Nazionale della Calabria IT9310069
- LIC Serro d'Ustra e Fiumara Butrano IT9350178
- LIC Torrente Ferraina IT9350157
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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 Aug | 27.4 °C | 23 % | 74 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 8 Aug | 31.5 °C | 23 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 9 Aug | 34.8 °C | 13 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 10 Aug | 35.9 °C | 10 % | 58 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 11 Aug | 34.2 °C | 13 % | 70 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 12 Aug | 29.8 °C | 25 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 13 Aug | 28.3 °C | 25 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 14 Aug after | 27.1 °C | 28 % | 33 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 25 |
| 15 Aug after | 27.0 °C | 28 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 16 Aug after | 28.2 °C | 26 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 17 Aug after | 29.8 °C | 18 % | 64 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 18 Aug after | 24.1 °C | 52 % | 66 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 19 Aug after | 23.5 °C | 45 % | 49 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 22 |
| 20 Aug after | 23.5 °C | 42 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 21 Aug after | 21.6 °C | 51 % | 45 km/h | 2.2 mm | Low 6 |
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 11 August 2021 the air beside the fire reached 52 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.7 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 · 63Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,096 haBagaladi4 August 2021 · 6 days · 11 km away
- 1,088 haReggio di Calabria27 July 2021 · 8 days · 23 km away
- 1,199 haReggio di Calabria18 July 2023 · 9 days · 25 km away
- 911 haReggio di Calabria5 July 2017 · 9 days · 25 km away
- 3,114 haMotta San GiovanniJuly 2023 · 6 days · 29 km away
- 1,652 haMammolaAugust 2021 · 8 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the San Luca fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 August 2021 to 13 August 2021 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 August 2021 to 10 August 2021.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 850 hectares (8.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: San Luca (756 ha, 7.2 %); Samo (96 ha, 1.9 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in San Luca and came within 6.3 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 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 74 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
- 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 7 August 2021 to 10 August 2021. 63 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 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 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.