Skip to content
worldfires
IT · Italy · →

Sulmona fire, August 2017 Sulmona, Pratola Peligna, Pacentro

Out · last detection 26 Aug 2017, 11:54 UTC

The fire started on 20 August 2017 in Sulmona, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,039 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 6 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in L'Aquila since 2016 (of 20 with a page). Number 7 in Italy in 2017, of 361.

Burnt area
2,039ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
6days
20 Aug 2017 – 25 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
6
municipalities
Started on
20 Aug
2017
Heat detections
222
in a single hotspot: 108 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
929MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

26 Aug 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Aug25 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

212223242526

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

The weather it burned in

25°high
50km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.6 mm on 2 Sept.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Sulmona 22,175 inhabitants · 3.2 km from the town where it started
    1,119 ha reached on 21 Aug
    19 %
  2. Pratola Peligna 7,039 inhabitants · 3.6 km from the town
    442 ha reached on 29 Aug
    16 %
  3. Pacentro 1,083 inhabitants · 1.9 km from the town
    423 ha reached on 21 Aug
    5.9 %
  4. Sant'Eufemia a Maiella 259 inhabitants · 2.9 km from the town
    44 ha
    1.1 %
  5. Salle 268 inhabitants · 4.9 km from the town
    10 ha
    0.4 %
  6. Caramanico Terme 1,779 inhabitants · 5.4 km from the town
    3 ha
    0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Other natural land35 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland23 %
  • Coniferous forest18 %
  • Broadleaved forest12 %
  • Mixed forest11 %
  • Agricultural areas0.7 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 82 %

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)
20 Aug 22.9 °C 40 % 38 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 16
21 Aug 17.2 °C 46 % 50 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 19
22 Aug 17.6 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 21
23 Aug 22.3 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
24 Aug 24.2 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
25 Aug 24.7 °C 33 % 23 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
26 Aug after 25.3 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
27 Aug after 25.8 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
28 Aug after 26.6 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
29 Aug after 21.0 °C 48 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
30 Aug after 23.7 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 Aug after 25.1 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.7 mm High 27
1 Sept after 22.9 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.4 mm High 27
2 Sept after 19.4 °C 42 % 78 km/h 6.6 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Aug 2017
After · 1 Sept 2017

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 31 August 2017 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1024 µg/m³
181920212223242526272829303112345
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 · 222Every 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 Italy ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sulmona fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 20 August 2017 and 25 August 2017: 6 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,039 hectares (20.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 6 municipalities: Sulmona (1,119 ha, 19 %); Pratola Peligna (442 ha, 16 %); Pacentro (423 ha, 5.9 %); Sant'Eufemia a Maiella (44 ha, 1.1 %); Salle (10 ha, 0.4 %); Caramanico Terme (3 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 1.9 km of Pacentro. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 24.7 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 50 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 Italy (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 · 1515

Satellite cross-check

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 · 1515.

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 ADM4 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License). 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.