Svilengrad fire, 17 July 2024 Свиленград · Svilengrad
The fire started on 17 July 2024 in Svilengrad, Bulgaria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 585 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 17th largest in Haskovo since 2016 (of 46 with a page). Number 15 in Bulgaria in 2024, of 62.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 585ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 17 Jul 2024 – 18 Jul 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 17 Jul
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 9
- in a single hotspot: 78 MW
- Danger at start
- 53
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 136MW
- 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 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.0 mm on 19 Jul.
This area had burned before
1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2 ha in 2020, 7 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Sofia boundary: geoBoundaries · geoBoundaries, Wikimedia (Public Domain).
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).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
586 ha reached on 17 Jul0.8 %
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 areas48 %
- Other natural land39 %
- Broadleaved forest8.6 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland3.8 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %
- ZEPA + LIC Sakar BG0000212 · BG0002021
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Jul | 38.0 °C | 26 % | 47 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 18 Jul | 39.2 °C | 21 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 19 Jul after | 37.0 °C | 34 % | 44 km/h | 3.0 mm | High 25 |
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 16 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 11 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 · 9Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,968 haTopolovgrad ТополовградSeptember 2023 · 2 days · 5 km away
- 2,202 haTopolovgrad ТополовградAugust 2020 · 3 days · 6 km away
- 7,848 haElhovo ЕлховоJuly 2025 · 6 days · 14 km away
- 8,124 haSvilengrad Свиленград13 July 2024 · 6 days · 15 km away
- 1,446 haHarmanli ХарманлиJune 2024 · 2 days · 30 km away
- 2,719 haHarmanli ХарманлиAugust 2025 · 5 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Svilengrad fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 17 July 2024 and 18 July 2024: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 585 hectares (5.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Svilengrad (586 ha, 0.8 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Svilengrad and came within 26.9 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 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Bulgaria (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 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. 9 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 (Public Domain). 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.