Trebinje fire, 8 August 2021 Bileća, Trebinje
The fire started on 8 August 2021 in Trebinje, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,061 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 10th largest in Republika Srpska since 2016 (of 391 with a page). Number 3 in Bosnia & Herzegovina in 2021, of 86.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,061ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 10days
- 8 Aug 2021 – 17 Aug 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 8 Aug
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 240
- in a single hotspot: 286 MW
- Danger at start
- 19
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 505MW
- 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 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
52% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 470 ha in 2016, 204 ha in 2017, 599 ha in 2019, 493 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,596 ha that had burned before.
- 581 ha Trebinje fire, June 2019 590 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 470 ha Trebinje fire, August 2016 474 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 425 ha Trebinje fire, April 2020 1,149 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 204 ha Bileća fire, March 2017 330 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 68 ha Trebinje fire, April 2020 576 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
1,827 ha reached on 9 Aug2.9 %
-
Trebinje where it started1,233 ha reached on 8 Aug1.4 %
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
- Sclerophyllous scrub80 %
- Other natural land14 %
- Agricultural areas4.2 %
- Broadleaved forest2.1 %
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 0.23 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 Aug | 29.0 °C | 38 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 9 Aug | 29.6 °C | 40 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 10 Aug | 29.7 °C | 45 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 11 Aug | 29.3 °C | 43 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 12 Aug | 29.6 °C | 33 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 13 Aug | 29.6 °C | 38 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 14 Aug | 29.9 °C | 34 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 15 Aug | 29.8 °C | 36 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 16 Aug | 29.0 °C | 45 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 17 Aug | 27.6 °C | 53 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 18 Aug after | 26.1 °C | 51 % | 36 km/h | 0.6 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 19 Aug after | 25.9 °C | 37 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 20 Aug after | 25.8 °C | 42 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 21 Aug after | 26.5 °C | 43 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 22 Aug after | 27.7 °C | 39 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 23 Aug after | 27.2 °C | 44 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
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.
Detections table · 240Every 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 Trebinje fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 August 2021 to 17 August 2021 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 August 2021 to 13 August 2021.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,061 hectares (30.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bileća (1,827 ha, 2.9 %); Trebinje (1,233 ha, 1.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 29.7 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Bosnia & Herzegovina (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: 123 · 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.
- Last day with fire: 13 August 2021 → 17 August 2021.
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 8 August 2021 to 13 August 2021. 240 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 ADM3 (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.