How long did the Yablanitsa fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 4 February 2024 and 6 February 2024: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 251 hectares (2.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Yablanitsa (252 ha, 1.3 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Yablanitsa and came within 2.7 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 21.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 5, class Very low.

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.

BG · Bulgaria · 2024-02-04 → 2024-02-06

Yablanitsa fire, February 2024 Ябланица · Yablanitsa

Out · last measured on 6 Feb 2024

The fire started on 4 February 2024 in Yablanitsa, Bulgaria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 251 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 20th largest in Lovech since 2016 (of 52 with a page). Number 32 in Bulgaria in 2024, of 62.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yablanitsa · 2019 Roman · 2024 Roman · 2019 Cherven Bryag · 2016

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area: 251ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 3days; 4 Feb 2024 – 6 Feb 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 4 Feb; 2024
Danger at start: 1; Very low · FWI index

The weather it burned in

21°high

64km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.0 mm on 12 Feb.

This area had burned before

39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 84 ha in 2019, 8 ha in 2021, 12 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 98 ha that had burned before.

84 ha Yablanitsa fire, March 2019 183 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Yablanitsa Ябланица 5,419 inhabitants · 2.7 km from the centre where it started

252 ha

1.3 %

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 woodland53 %
Broadleaved forest41 %
Agricultural areas5.6 %

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)
4 Feb	13.5 °C	51 %	64 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 1
5 Feb	19.2 °C	33 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 3
6 Feb	21.1 °C	22 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 5
7 Feb after	17.6 °C	38 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 5
8 Feb after	18.6 °C	33 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 5
9 Feb after	18.0 °C	36 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
10 Feb after	17.0 °C	39 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
11 Feb after	17.0 °C	51 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
12 Feb after	14.2 °C	50 %	28 km/h	6.0 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Jan 2024

After · 13 Feb 2024

Before After

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 8 February 2024 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak16 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1019 µg/m³

Optical depth0.40

WHO 15

23456789

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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Bulgaria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Yablanitsa fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 4 February 2024 and 6 February 2024: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 251 hectares (2.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Yablanitsa (252 ha, 1.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Yablanitsa and came within 2.7 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 21.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 5, class Very low.
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 ›

ГДПБЗН · Пожарна безопасност и защита на населението ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

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What really happened?

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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.

How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.

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 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.

Where it burned