How long did the Sarandë fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 July 2025 to 7 July 2025 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 July 2025 to 4 July 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,216 hectares (12.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Sarandë (1,216 ha, 1.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 28.3 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, 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.

AL · Albania · 2025-07-01 → 2025-07-07

Sarandë fire, 1 July 2025 Sarandë

Out · last detection 7 Jul 2025, 01:22 UTC

The fire started on 1 July 2025 in Sarandë, Albania, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,216 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 10th largest in Vlorë since 2016 (of 160 with a page). Number 10 in Albania in 2025, of 71.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sarandë · 2017 Sarandë · 2025 Gjirokastër · 2017 Sarandë · 2017

Burnt area: 1,216ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 7days; 1 Jul 2025 – 7 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 1 Jul; 2025
Heat detections: 35; in a single hotspot: 63 MW
Danger at start: 27; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 72MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Jul7 Jul

Play back 7 Jul 2025

How it evolved, day by day

1 Jul 2 Jul 3 Jul 4 Jul 5 Jul 7 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

28°high

45km/h · peak gust

31%lowest humidity

It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 31 ha in 2017, 18 ha in 2023.

31 ha Sarandë fire, August 2017 606 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.8% of the area of London (12 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

Sarandë where it started

1,216 ha reached on 1 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

Other natural land64 %
Scrub and transitional woodland15 %
Sclerophyllous scrub9.6 %
Broadleaved forest4.0 %
Agricultural areas3.4 %
Coniferous forest2.6 %
Mixed forest0.6 %

Protected area affected (EFFIS layer): 0 %

ZEPA ORI TSAMANTA, FILIATON, FARMAKOVOUNI, MEGALI RACHI GR2120009

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)
1 Jul	28.3 °C	31 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
2 Jul	27.9 °C	34 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
3 Jul	27.5 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
4 Jul	28.0 °C	37 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
5 Jul	28.6 °C	32 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
6 Jul	28.6 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.3 mm	High 26
7 Jul	27.2 °C	33 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
8 Jul after	26.3 °C	42 %	46 km/h	0.1 mm	High 26
9 Jul after	22.9 °C	45 %	62 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 21
10 Jul after	22.1 °C	38 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
11 Jul after	23.4 °C	33 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
12 Jul after	23.8 °C	38 %	31 km/h	0.9 mm	Moderate 16
13 Jul after	26.1 °C	40 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
14 Jul after	26.9 °C	32 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Jun 2025

After · 14 Jul 2025

Before After

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 4 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 41 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak41 µg/m³

Days over the guideline2 days

PM1059 µg/m³

Optical depth0.36

WHO 15

29301234567

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 · 35Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Albania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sarandë fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 July 2025 to 7 July 2025 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 July 2025 to 4 July 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,216 hectares (12.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Sarandë (1,216 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 28.3 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 128 · 112.

How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 July 2025 to 4 July 2025. 35 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 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.

Where it burned