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Sutera fire, July 2025 Sutera, Bompensiere, Milena

Out · last detection 7 Jul 2025, 01:24 UTC

The fire started on 6 July 2025 in Sutera, Italy, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 554 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 5 municipalities.

It is the 7th largest in Caltanissetta since 2016 (of 149 with a page). Number 20 in Italy in 2025, of 216.

The power measured by the satellite is low (0.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sutera · 2021Sutera · 2022Sutera · 2019Sutera · 2017

Burnt area
554ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
6 Jul 2025 – 7 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
5
municipalities
Started on
6 Jul
2025
Heat detections
1
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Natura 2000
44%
of the perimeter is protected land

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Jul7 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

7 Jul 2025 · 0 MW · 1

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
44km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 13 ha in 2017, 208 ha in 2019, 40 ha in 2020, 351 ha in 2021, 333 ha in 2022, 71 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 459 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.3% of the area of London (5.5 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

  1. Sutera 1,178 inhabitants · 2.8 km from the centre where it started
    468 ha reached on 7 Jul
    13 %
  2. Bompensiere 491 inhabitants · 2.5 km from the centre
    60 ha
    3.0 %
  3. Milena 2,700 inhabitants · 1.0 km from the centre
    22 ha
    0.9 %
  4. Campofranco 2,656 inhabitants · 3.5 km from the centre
    5 ha
    0.1 %
  5. Mussomeli 9,913 inhabitants · 8.2 km from the centre
    0 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

  • Other natural land62 %
  • Agricultural areas38 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 44 %

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)
6 Jul 36.0 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.3 mm High 37
7 Jul 34.1 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Jul after 35.7 °C 33 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
9 Jul after 30.7 °C 40 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
10 Jul after 30.2 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Jul after 29.9 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
12 Jul after 30.3 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Jul after 32.1 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Jul after 35.8 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Jul after 33.6 °C 33 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
16 Jul after 36.2 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
17 Jul after 34.6 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Jun 2025
After · 14 Jul 2025

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 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 12 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak12 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1018 µg/m³
Optical depth0.28
45678910
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 · 1Every 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 Sutera fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 6 July 2025 and 7 July 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 554 hectares (5.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 5 municipalities: Sutera (468 ha, 13 %); Bompensiere (60 ha, 3.0 %); Milena (22 ha, 0.9 %); Campofranco (5 ha, 0.1 %); Mussomeli (0 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 1.0 km of the centre of Milena, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very 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 · 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.

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 · 1515.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. One Suomi-NPP VIIRS detection 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 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.