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Secu fire, September 2026 Dumbrava, Secu, Bâcleș

Out · last detection 7 Sept 2026, 11:10 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2026 in Secu, Romania, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 305 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Dolj since 2016 (of 12 with a page). Number 16 in Romania in 2026, of 59.

The power measured by the satellite is low (9.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

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Burnt area
305ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
≈ 17days
6 Sept 2026 – 22 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit
4
municipalities
Started on
6 Sept
2026
Heat detections
11
in a single hotspot: 10 MW
Danger at start
49
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
18MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept22 Sept
7 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

6 Sept 2026 · 1 MW · 2 7 Sept 2026 · 36 MW · 9
6 Sept 7 Sept

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

33°high
55km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Dumbrava
    168 ha reached on 6 Sept
    2.1 %
  2. Secu 1,041 inhabitants · 2.7 km from the centre where it started
    115 ha reached on 6 Sept
    4.0 %
  3. Bâcleș
    18 ha
    0.2 %
  4. Argetoaia 4,331 inhabitants · 8.0 km from the centre
    3 ha
    0.0 %

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 areas93 %
  • Broadleaved forest7.0 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
6 Sept 29.1 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
7 Sept 27.4 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Sept 29.1 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Sept 30.5 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Sept 31.1 °C 29 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Sept 33.0 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Sept 24.3 °C 33 % 49 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 42
13 Sept 25.1 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.3 mm High 37
14 Sept 24.9 °C 30 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Sept 25.6 °C 35 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
16 Sept 27.4 °C 28 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
17 Sept 29.0 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Sept 28.9 °C 27 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
19 Sept 29.3 °C 26 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Sept 29.4 °C 32 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Sept 25.7 °C 29 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 Sept 19.6 °C 34 % 38 km/h 1.0 mm High 22
23 Sept after 19.0 °C 36 % 43 km/h 0.7 mm High 24
24 Sept after 20.1 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Sept after 19.7 °C 40 % 20 km/h 0.1 mm High 23
26 Sept after 20.4 °C 41 % 23 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
27 Sept after 23.3 °C 33 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
28 Sept after 24.1 °C 32 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
29 Sept after 23.5 °C 35 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
30 Sept after 22.5 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
1 Oct after 21.8 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
2 Oct after 21.7 °C 27 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Aug 2026
After · 29 Sept 2026

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 5 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak16 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1019 µg/m³
Optical depth0.24
456789
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 · 11Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Romania ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Secu fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (6 September 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 22 September 2026 (17 days from 6 September 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 305 hectares (3.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Dumbrava (168 ha, 2.1 %); Secu (115 ha, 4.0 %); Bâcleș (18 ha, 0.2 %); Argetoaia (3 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Secu and came within 2.7 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 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Romania (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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 11 September 2026 → 22 September 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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 11 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.

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 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.