2026 From the chosen year 2–5 years old Over 5 years old Small (under 10 ha) Medium (10–500 ha) Large (over 500 ha) Romania · 2016–2026 # Where Romania burned Satellites mapped 4,985 vegetation fires between 2016 and September 2026. Find your commune and see the fire scars on the 3D relief map. Height is burned area, colour is age. Search a commune, town or county Loading the relief… Or scroll: the story, in four steps. Year and county totals and the ten largest fires are below: [years](#cat-de-mult), [counties](#judete) and [the fire top ten](#comune). 2016–2026 ## A decade of fire, on the map Every column is one fire mapped from orbit by the European EFFIS service. Height shows the burned area, colour shows age: bright orange is the chosen year, old traces fade towards grey. Scroll and the years ignite on the relief. Between 2016 and September 2026, satellites caught 4,985 fires, covering 600,814 hectares. This is not the firefighters' count: every column is one burned perimeter detected from orbit. 2022 ## 2022, the record year 1,432 fires and 162,518 burned hectares — the series record, by count and by area. The map shows fires through 2022; the later years' columns have gone out. Danube Delta ## Tulcea burns the most 58.6% of the country's whole burned area is assigned to a single county, Tulcea: 1,227 fires, 352,336 hectares. Sfântu Gheorghe has the largest total burned area of any commune: 138 fires, 131,055 hectares. The largest fire in the series burned 10,843 hectares at Sfântu Gheorghe (28 January 2025) — in the Delta too. What is measured ## What the columns show In “Size” mode, colour shows area: from cream for small fires to scorched red for fires of thousands of hectares. Height follows the square root of the area, so the largest and the smallest fire fit on one map; ratios of heights are not ratios of areas. A fire here is a burned perimeter, not a filmed flame: the data give no cause and do not show fires burning now. What the map cannot know, below. ## Put your place on the map Open the map, search a commune, town or county and pick the year at the bottom. On the map, the chosen year shows the fires up to then; click a column to see the EFFIS dates, the area and the interval between them. For every place, the panel shows the full-series totals, 2016 – September 2026, and compares the burned area with the country's. ## How much burned, year by year? The record sits in 2022: 1,432 fires and 162,518 hectares. The whole series, between 2016 and September 2026, adds up to 600,814 burned hectares. 2026 is partial: the last fire in the series is from 22 September 2026, and the year rankings can still shift before the year ends. ## By county Fires and burned hectares in each county, between 2016 and September 2026. Sorted by burned area, from Tulcea down. Bucharest and Ilfov are not in the table: no perimeter in the series is assigned to them by perimeter centroid. Counties by burned area, 2016–2026 County | Fires | Hectares burned | Share of country | Tulcea | 1,227 | 352,336 | 58.6% | Caraș-Severin | 847 | 75,107 | 12.5% | Hunedoara | 551 | 30,532 | 5.1% | Mehedinți | 341 | 28,321 | 4.7% | Gorj | 415 | 28,207 | 4.7% | Alba | 222 | 11,760 | 2% | Maramureș | 122 | 10,797 | 1.8% | Timiș | 159 | 8,221 | 1.4% | Bihor | 158 | 7,343 | 1.2% | Arad | 201 | 7,223 | 1.2% | Dolj | 93 | 4,733 | 0.8% | Cluj | 64 | 4,604 | 0.8% | Constanța | 60 | 4,202 | 0.7% | Prahova | 55 | 3,932 | 0.7% | Vâlcea | 59 | 3,223 | 0.5% | Sălaj | 37 | 2,840 | 0.5% | Teleorman | 14 | 1,973 | 0.3% | Sibiu | 68 | 1,821 | 0.3% | Buzău | 23 | 1,690 | 0.3% | Giurgiu | 18 | 1,527 | 0.3% | Vrancea | 27 | 1,339 | 0.2% | Satu Mare | 22 | 1,315 | 0.2% | Brăila | 15 | 1,307 | 0.2% | Dâmbovița | 43 | 1,184 | 0.2% | Olt | 15 | 1,113 | 0.2% | Mureș | 22 | 1,008 | 0.2% | Vaslui | 16 | 608 | 0.1% | Bacău | 16 | 470 | 0.1% | Brașov | 10 | 455 | 0.1% | Bistrița-Năsăud | 10 | 386 | 0.1% | Argeș | 14 | 385 | 0.1% | Harghita | 9 | 191 | under 0.05% | Iași | 6 | 133 | under 0.05% | Ialomița | 2 | 126 | under 0.05% | Covasna | 4 | 121 | under 0.05% | Neamț | 7 | 110 | under 0.05% | Botoșani | 7 | 102 | under 0.05% | Galați | 3 | 38 | under 0.05% | Călărași | 1 | 24 | under 0.05% | Suceava | 2 | 7 | under 0.05% | ### The ten largest fires Ten perimeters, all in Tulcea county, in the Delta. Place names are the ones in the EFFIS database. The ten largest fires Place | Date | Hectares | Sfântu Gheorghe · Tulcea | 28 Jan 2025 | 10,843 | Sfântu Gheorghe · Tulcea | 10 Mar 2019 | 10,216 | Sfântu Gheorghe · Tulcea | 18 Feb 2025 | 10,147 | Sfântu Gheorghe · Tulcea | 18 Mar 2022 | 8,683 | C.A. Rosetti · Tulcea | 22 Mar 2022 | 7,191 | Chilia Veche · Tulcea | 31 Mar 2022 | 6,700 | Oraș Sulina · Tulcea | 14 Feb 2025 | 5,608 | Sfântu Gheorghe · Tulcea | 8 Mar 2021 | 5,420 | Sfântu Gheorghe · Tulcea | 20 Feb 2019 | 5,103 | Sfântu Gheorghe · Tulcea | 25 Sep 2017 | 4,316 | ## What the map cannot know The cause The data give the perimeter, the date and the area; they do not say whether the fire started from lightning, a cigarette or stubble burning. The data do not distinguish an uncontrolled fire from a planned burn. Today's fire This edition does not show fires burning now; the last perimeter is dated 22 September 2026. This page is an archive of scars, not an operations map. Small fires The MODIS data used here have a resolution of about 250 m, so small outbreaks may be missing from the series. 16 perimeters have zero area in the EFFIS database; they appear on the map at minimum height. The year 2026 The series stops at 22 September 2026; the year is unfinished and the year rankings can still shift. Where the column lands The column stands on the burned perimeter's centroid; on long perimeters it can sit far from the edge. One perimeter is centred offshore, near Sulina, and belongs to no commune. The column scale Height starts from a minimum and follows the square root of the burned area: a fire 100 times larger appears 10 times taller, not 100 times. The boundaries Commune boundaries are simplified to about 30 metres. Fires are assigned to communes by the perimeter centroid. ## How we computed it and where the data come from The fires. MODIS burned-area perimeters from the European EFFIS service (Copernicus, Joint Research Centre), modis.ba.poly layer over WFS, COUNTRY='RO' filter, accessed 29 September 2026: 4,985 perimeters with valid geometry, between 2016 and September 2026, with start date, end date, area in hectares, commune and county. We kept every perimeter inside Romania's bounding box. EFFIS notes that the product catches only a fraction of the number of fires — about 95% of the burned area at European level. Matching to the map. We placed each fire in its commune by the perimeter centroid: 4,984 of 4,985 found their commune; one 57-hectare perimeter, centred offshore near Sulina, belongs to no commune. County tables and panels follow the same centroid rule; the one communeless perimeter counts towards Tulcea, its EFFIS county. The page shows commune names from the geo-spatial.org LAU registry; the names in the ten-largest-fires table are the ones in the EFFIS database. The columns. Every fire has one column on its perimeter centroid. Height follows the square root of the burned area. The chosen year cumulatively shows every fire up to then. Colour shows age in “Recency” mode (bright orange for the chosen year, grey for old traces) and area in “Size” mode (cream to scorched red, on a logarithmic scale). The relief. Copernicus GLO-30 (European Space Agency), 30-metre resolution, reduced to about 900 metres on the page. Vertical exaggeration varies with camera distance. Boundaries. Communes and counties: geo-spatial.org, after ANCPI data (CC BY-SA 4.0). The outlines on the page are simplified and distributed under the same licence. EFFIS data are reused with attribution (CC BY 4.0). ### Sources EFFIS rapid damage assessment, MODIS burned-area perimeters: [effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu](https://effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/about-effis/technical-background/rapid-damage-assessment), modis.ba.poly layer over WFS, COUNTRY='RO' filter, accessed 29 September 2026, [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Communes and counties: [geo-spatial.org, ro_admin_lau_polygon](https://geo-spatial.org/ghiduri/procesari-etl/administrative-boundaries/ro-admin-lau-polygon/), after ANCPI, [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Copernicus DEM GLO-30, ESA: [doi.org/10.5270/ESA-c5d3d65](https://doi.org/10.5270/ESA-c5d3d65). ## Frequently asked questions ### How much burned in Romania between 2016 and 2026? 4,985 satellite-mapped vegetation fires, covering 600,814 hectares: the most in 2022 (1,432 fires, 162,518 hectares). The series stops in September 2026. ### Where were the largest fires? 58.6% of the burned area is assigned to Tulcea county: 1,227 fires, 352,336 hectares. The largest fire in the series burned 10,843 hectares at Sfântu Gheorghe (28 January 2025). ### Does the map also tell the cause of the fires? No. The EFFIS data give each fire's perimeter, date and area — not its cause, and not today's flames: this is a map of scars, stopping in September 2026. The limits are explained in “What the map cannot know”. Share