Sicily is in the grip of fire. The region has been affected by dozens of fires in various provinces for days, with over 100 interventions in a single day, on Tuesday, between the Fire Brigade, Civil Protection and the Forestry Corps. A condition fueled by increasingly critical temperatures and strong gusts of wind, which has led to damage to crops, businesses, homes and the consequent temporary closure of some sections of the A19 motorway, with a red alert issued in all provinces.
Meanwhile, data from the Copernicus EFFIS system confirm that 2026 is a particularly complicated year with regards to fires in Italy. As of July 22, the area burned since the beginning of the year reached 36,600 hectares, almost 19,000 of which in the last week alone, well above the 2006–2025 historical average of 20,329 hectares.
The situation in Sicily and the most affected areas
The provinces of Palermo and Agrigento remain the most affected, with several fire fronts not yet under control. In the Agrigento area the flames entered Santo Stefano Quisquina, an inland town about 60 km from the capital, where around a hundred residents had to leave their homes.
Similar scenario in Castronovo di Sicilia, in the Palermo area: over 36 hours of flames, more than 90 hectares of vegetation burned, and the fire reached close to the homes, causing dozens of people to leave. In Cammarata, in the Agrigento area, the flames devastated around 250 hectares of state land and Mediterranean scrub, between the Piano d’Amata, Serre, Saraceno, Salaci and Rossino districts, forcing around 200 people to leave their homes as a precaution.
In the Palermo area, a wind farm in the Caccamo area and a house in Campofelice di Fitalia also burned down, and several interventions were carried out in the Catania area, where a fire destroyed a warehouse in the Passo Cavaliere district, and above all in the municipalities of Mascalucia, Belpasso, Zafferana Etnea, Adrano, Caltagirone and Mascali, while several areas of Palermo remained without electricity for hours. Inland, in the Ennese area, some fires have been active for days now. Firefighters, forestry corps and civil protection are deployed against the flames, with Canadair, helicopters and tankers.
What the EFFIS data say
The numbers cited at the beginning come from the Burnt Areas database of EFFIS, the European satellite fire monitoring system of the Copernicus programme, and reveal a drastic acceleration, considering that of the 36,600 hectares burned from 1 January to 22 July, 18,958 have gone up in smoke in the last seven days, with 68 fires detected in just one week, an increase compared to the previous one.
The overall number of fires was also already anomalous before this wave, 112 forest fires as of July 8th against a historical average of 65.
According to the latest ISPRA report, Sicily is the Italian region most affected by forest fires for the fourth consecutive year, with over 500 km² burned in 2025 alone: 52% of the total area affected by fires in Italy in 2025 and 32% of the forest area is in fact located in the Sicilian territory (with 506.68 km respectively2 and 39.67 km2).
The picture is that of a season that is now entering its most critical period, given that historically the peak of fires in Italy falls between July and August. For Sicily, in its fourth consecutive summer as the most burned region in Italy, the real game is played before the trigger, between prevention, maintenance of the territory and management of abandoned areas.
