West Achaea fire, July 2022 Δυτικής Αχαΐας · West Achaea
The fire started on 3 July 2022 in West Achaea, Greece, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 818 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 9th largest in Western Greece since 2016 (of 36 with a page). Number 7 in Greece in 2022, of 29.
The power measured by the satellite is low (17.5 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
- 818ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 3 Jul 2022 – 4 Jul 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 3 Jul
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 23
- in a single hotspot: 17 MW
- Danger at start
- 50
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 64MW
- 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 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.1 mm on 8 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).
Athens boundary: geoBoundaries · geoBoundaries, Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0).
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).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
818 ha reached on 3 Jul1.2 %
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 areas45 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland44 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub8.2 %
- Other natural land2.4 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Jul | 36.4 °C | 18 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 4 Jul | 36.5 °C | 15 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 5 Jul after | 36.0 °C | 16 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 6 Jul after | 34.9 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 7 Jul after | 34.2 °C | 31 % | 33 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 40 |
| 8 Jul after | 33.8 °C | 28 % | 46 km/h | 8.1 mm | Moderate 14 |
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 7 July 2022 the air beside the fire reached 19 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 · 23Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,336 haErymanthos ΕρυμάνθουJune 2024 · 2 days · 4 km away
- 1,483 haWest Achaea Δυτικής ΑχαΐαςSeptember 2017 · 1 day · 15 km away
- 819 haPyrgos ΠύργουAugust 2025 · 2 days · 23 km away
- 2,846 haPatras Πάτρα12 August 2025 · 2 days · 25 km away
- 18,400 haPyrgos Πύργου4 August 2021 · 9 days · 31 km away
- 777 haOlympia Αρχαίας ΟλυμπίαςJuly 2022 · 2 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the West Achaea fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 3 July 2022 and 4 July 2022: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 818 hectares (8.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered West Achaea (818 ha, 1.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Greece (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 · 199 · 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. 23 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 ADM3 (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication). 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.