Solaro fire, 4 February 2020 Solaro, Quenza
The fire started on 4 February 2020 in Solaro, France, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 979 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 7th largest in Haute-Corse since 2016 (of 27 with a page). The largest in France in 2020, of 18.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Quenza · 2020Solaro · 2020Solaro · 2020Zicavo · 2022
- Burnt area
- 979ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 4days
- 4 Feb 2020 – 7 Feb 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 4 Feb
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 81
- in a single hotspot: 75 MW
- Danger at start
- 7
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 180MW
- 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 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 14 Feb.
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).
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
-
822 ha reached on 4 Feb8.7 %
-
Quenza 200 inhabitants · 14.4 km from the centre157 ha reached on 4 Feb1.6 %
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
- Coniferous forest44 %
- Mixed forest25 %
- Other natural land20 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub6.6 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland4.1 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 16 %
- ZEPA Aiguilles de Bavella FR9410109
- LIC Rivière de la Solenzara FR9400603
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 were about 0.13 hectares of 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Feb | 15.4 °C | 46 % | 188 km/h | 0.3 mm | Low 7 |
| 5 Feb | 12.1 °C | 21 % | 100 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 6 Feb | 10.5 °C | 30 % | 91 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 7 Feb | 11.9 °C | 45 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 8 Feb after | 11.2 °C | 18 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 9 Feb after | 12.2 °C | 36 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 10 Feb after | 13.1 °C | 80 % | 150 km/h | 3.1 mm | Very low 0 |
| 11 Feb after | 13.9 °C | 63 % | 156 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very low 1 |
| 12 Feb after | 13.9 °C | 35 % | 107 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 13 Feb after | 13.7 °C | 27 % | 64 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 14 Feb after | 15.5 °C | 36 % | 146 km/h | 1.4 mm | Very low 4 |
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 12 February 2020 the air beside the fire reached 29 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)
Detections table · 81Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Solaro fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 February 2020 to 7 February 2020 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 February 2020 to 6 February 2020.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 979 hectares (9.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Solaro (822 ha, 8.7 %); Quenza (157 ha, 1.6 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Solaro and came within 3.8 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 15.4 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 188 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 7, class Low.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of France (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 · 18 · 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 4 February 2020 to 6 February 2020. 81 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 ADM5 (Open Data Commons Attribution License 1.0). 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.