Zakynthos fire, 12 August 2017 Ζάκυνθος · Zakynthos
The fire started on 12 August 2017 in Zakynthos, Greece, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 770 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 5th largest in Ionian Islands since 2016 (of 20 with a page). Number 6 in Greece in 2017, of 32.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 770ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 5days
- 12 Aug 2017 – 16 Aug 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 12 Aug
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 59
- in a single hotspot: 212 MW
- Danger at start
- 43
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 234MW
- 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 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
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
-
169 ha reached on 13 Aug0.4 %
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 scrub65 %
- Agricultural areas28 %
- Coniferous forest6.2 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Aug | 31.8 °C | 37 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 13 Aug | 25.9 °C | 41 % | 66 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 14 Aug | 29.0 °C | 38 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 15 Aug | 30.6 °C | 29 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 16 Aug | 31.4 °C | 28 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 17 Aug after | 33.0 °C | 21 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 18 Aug after | 32.2 °C | 21 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 19 Aug after | 32.9 °C | 19 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 20 Aug after | 31.3 °C | 25 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 21 Aug after | 27.9 °C | 50 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 22 Aug after | 27.5 °C | 43 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 23 Aug after | 26.4 °C | 51 % | 40 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 23 |
| 24 Aug after | 28.2 °C | 45 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 25 Aug after | 30.0 °C | 23 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 26 Aug after | 29.9 °C | 25 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
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 12 August 2017 the air beside the fire reached 38 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily 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 · 59Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,780 haZakynthos ΖάκυνθοςAugust 2025 · 3 days · 2 km away
- 919 haZakynthos ΖάκυνθοςSeptember 2019 · 2 days · 4 km away
- 197 haZakynthos ΖάκυνθοςSeptember 2016 · 2 days · 4 km away
- 312 haZakynthos Ζάκυνθος11 August 2017 · 5 days · 10 km away
- 509 haZakynthos ΖάκυνθοςJuly 2017 · 1 day · 15 km away
- 1,592 haZakynthos Ζάκυνθος26 August 2017 · 3 days · 17 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Zakynthos fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 August 2017 to 16 August 2017 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 August 2017 to 15 August 2017.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 770 hectares (7.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Zakynthos (169 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very high.
- 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 12 August 2017 to 15 August 2017. 59 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.