Sarandë fire, 26 July 2024 Sarandë
The fire started on 26 July 2024 in Sarandë, Albania, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 467 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 40th largest in Vlorë since 2016 (of 160 with a page). Number 20 in Albania in 2024, of 70.
Compare with…
We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 467ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 26 Jul 2024 – 27 Jul 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 26 Jul
- 2024
- Danger at start
- 22
- High · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 4 Aug.
This area had burned before
42% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 98 ha in 2017, 71 ha in 2019, 28 ha in 2020.
What happened to each town
-
Sarandë where it started467 ha0.6 %
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
- Other natural land61 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub23 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland16 %
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 0.10 hectares of 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Jul | 29.9 °C | 41 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 27 Jul | 31.3 °C | 41 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 28 Jul after | 32.2 °C | 39 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 29 Jul after | 33.7 °C | 36 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 30 Jul after | 33.8 °C | 36 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 31 Jul after | 31.4 °C | 32 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 1 Aug after | 30.4 °C | 40 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 2 Aug after | 31.2 °C | 38 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 3 Aug after | 32.5 °C | 36 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 4 Aug after | 31.4 °C | 40 % | 29 km/h | 2.1 mm | Moderate 12 |
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 29 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 10 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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)
Other fires nearby
- 1,719 haSarandë11 July 2017 · 7 days · 8 km away
- 12,229 haSarandë6 August 2025 · 9 days · 22 km away
- 5,609 haGjirokastër8 August 2017 · 5 days · 26 km away
- 2,295 haCorfu Νότιας ΚέρκυραςJuly 2023 · 4 days · 27 km away
- 1,633 haGjirokastërJuly 2022 · 3 days · 28 km away
- 4,153 haDelvinë8 July 2024 · 6 days · 29 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sarandë fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 26 July 2024 and 27 July 2024: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 467 hectares (4.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Sarandë (467 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 31.3 °C, humidity dropped to 41 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Albania (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: 128 · 112 · 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. No 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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic). 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.