Zakynthos fire, September 2019 Ζάκυνθος · Zakynthos
The fire started on 15 September 2019 in Zakynthos, Greece, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 919 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 4th largest in Ionian Islands since 2016 (of 20 with a page). Number 2 in Greece in 2019, of 19.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 919ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 15 Sept 2019 – 16 Sept 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 15 Sept
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 56
- in a single hotspot: 346 MW
- Danger at start
- 46
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.5GW
- 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 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.4 mm on 20 Sept.
This area had burned before
1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7 ha in 2017.
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
-
403 ha reached on 15 Sept1.1 %
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 scrub71 %
- Agricultural areas22 %
- Coniferous forest7.6 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 11 %
- ZEPA + LIC DYTIKES KAI VOREIOANATOLIKES AKTES ZAKYNTHOU GR2210001
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Sept | 29.6 °C | 23 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 16 Sept | 28.2 °C | 32 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 17 Sept after | 27.3 °C | 39 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 18 Sept after | 27.3 °C | 42 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 19 Sept after | 26.9 °C | 50 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 20 Sept after | 25.1 °C | 55 % | 46 km/h | 7.4 mm | Low 5 |
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 15 September 2019 the air beside the fire reached 44 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 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 · 56Every 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
- 770 haZakynthos Ζάκυνθος12 August 2017 · 5 days · 4 km away
- 197 haZakynthos ΖάκυνθοςSeptember 2016 · 2 days · 7 km away
- 312 haZakynthos Ζάκυνθος11 August 2017 · 5 days · 14 km away
- 509 haZakynthos ΖάκυνθοςJuly 2017 · 1 day · 19 km away
- 1,592 haZakynthos Ζάκυνθος26 August 2017 · 3 days · 21 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Zakynthos fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 15 September 2019 and 16 September 2019: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 919 hectares (9.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Zakynthos (403 ha, 1.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 29.6 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 56 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.