Sarandë fire, 11 August 2025 Sarandë
The fire started on 11 August 2025 in Sarandë, Albania, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 551 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 32th largest in Vlorë since 2016 (of 160 with a page). Number 22 in Albania in 2025, of 71.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 551ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 11 Aug 2025 – 12 Aug 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 11 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 18
- in a single hotspot: 83 MW
- Danger at start
- 34
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 252MW
- 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 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.5 mm on 22 Aug.
This area had burned before
80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 316 ha in 2017, 147 ha in 2019, 166 ha in 2022, 61 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 443 ha that had burned before.
- 206 ha Sarandë fire, July 2017 341 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 147 ha Sarandë fire, August 2019 148 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 111 ha Sarandë fire, July 2022 112 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 46 ha Sarandë fire, July 2022 125 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1 ha Sarandë fire, August 2017 109 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).
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).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
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 started551 ha reached on 11 Aug0.7 %
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 areas58 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland26 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub17 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Aug | 37.0 °C | 26 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 12 Aug | 37.4 °C | 27 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 13 Aug after | 36.2 °C | 32 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 14 Aug after | 31.5 °C | 44 % | 30 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 29 |
| 15 Aug after | 32.2 °C | 45 % | 26 km/h | 0.8 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 16 Aug after | 32.7 °C | 32 % | 27 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 26 |
| 17 Aug after | 31.4 °C | 39 % | 25 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 28 |
| 18 Aug after | 30.2 °C | 48 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 19 Aug after | 31.4 °C | 44 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 20 Aug after | 31.2 °C | 44 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 21 Aug after | 32.1 °C | 44 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 22 Aug after | 30.4 °C | 50 % | 33 km/h | 6.5 mm | Very low 5 |
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 2025 the air beside the fire reached 47 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 · 18Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,719 haSarandë11 July 2017 · 7 days · 11 km away
- 12,229 haSarandë6 August 2025 · 9 days · 20 km away
- 5,609 haGjirokastër8 August 2017 · 5 days · 24 km away
- 4,153 haDelvinë8 July 2024 · 6 days · 27 km away
- 2,295 haCorfu Νότιας ΚέρκυραςJuly 2023 · 4 days · 30 km away
- 1,772 haDelvinë19 July 2024 · 5 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sarandë fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 11 August 2025 and 12 August 2025: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 551 hectares (5.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Sarandë (551 ha, 0.7 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very 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. 18 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.
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.