Venta del Moro fire, July 2022 Venta del Moro
The fire started on 4 July 2022 in Venta del Moro, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,478 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality. According to EGIF (MITECO), it was detected on 3 July 2022 at 15:24 and declared extinguished on 20 July 2022.
Number 38 in Spain in 2022, of 196.
The power measured by the satellite is low (14.0 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…
- Burnt area
- 1,478ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 4 Jul 2022 – 5 Jul 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 4 Jul
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 33
- in a single hotspot: 14 MW
- Danger at start
- 32
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 149MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
5 Jul 2022 · 149 MW · 33
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 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.0 mm on 6 Jul.
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).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
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
-
1,480 ha reached on 5 Jul5.4 %
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
- Scrub and transitional woodland49 %
- Coniferous forest29 %
- Agricultural areas16 %
- Other natural land6.3 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 85 %
- ZEPA Hoces del Cabriel (ZEPA) ES0000472
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.
Official record
According to EGIF (MITECO), this fire started on 3 July 2022 and burned 1,331 ha (the satellite measured 1,478 ha).
- Venta del Moro Tochar 3 July 2022 · 15:24 1,331 ha · extinguished on 20 July 2022 · cause: natural (lightning)
MITECO, Estadística General de Incendios Forestales (EGIF). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.
Checked against the press
Checked on 30 September 2026We checked this page against 4 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- incendio de la Derrubiada · incendio de Hoces del Cabriel
- Official area reported: 1,463 ha (the satellite measured 1,478 ha)
- Declared under control (not yet extinguished): 8 July 2022
Sources
- El Consell destina 7,7 millones a la restauracion de zonas incendiadas en 2022 — El Periodico de Aqui, 10 August 2025
- Controlado el incendio de Venta del Moro que quemo 1.300 hectareas — Deia, 8 July 2022
- La lluvia intensa en Venta del Moro (Valencia) da una tregua a los equipos de extincion — Publico, 5 July 2022
- El incendio de Venta del Moro (Valencia) ya afecta a la Reserva Natural de las Hoces de Cabriel — eldiario.es, 5 July 2022
Official figures are measured differently from satellite ones and sometimes cover only part of the fire.
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 Jul | 37.0 °C | 10 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 5 Jul | 32.2 °C | 32 % | 41 km/h | 1.2 mm | High 26 |
| 6 Jul after | 28.7 °C | 48 % | 44 km/h | 4.0 mm | Low 6 |
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 4 July 2022 the air beside the fire reached 15 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 · 33Every 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 Venta del Moro fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 4 July 2022 and 5 July 2022: 2 days between the first and last image with fire. According to EGIF (MITECO), it was detected on 3 July 2022 at 15:24 and declared extinguished on 20 July 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,478 hectares (14.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Venta del Moro (1,480 ha, 5.4 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Venta del Moro and came within 3.4 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 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Spain (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. 33 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with EGIF (MITECO): 1,331 official ha against 1,478 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
- Checked against news and agencies: 4 confirmed sources.
- 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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.