Sicily and Sardinia's scattered fire summer: what it does to a road trip
Which fires actually mattered, and where were they?
This is not one fire with one perimeter. It is a summer of many separate fires, most of them burning for a day or two and then going out, spread across two large islands and the toe of the mainland. That matters for how you plan, because the risk on any given day is less about avoiding a named fire and more about the chance that the road you are on gets shut for a couple of hours.
The worst concentration in Sicily has been inland, in the hills between Palermo and Agrigento.
The peak came on 22 July. Patients at the Ignazio Attardi clinic in the town were moved to other hospitals. Residents were also moved out at Castronovo di Sicilia and Bivona, and precautionary evacuations were carried out at Carini and Villagrazia di Carini, west of Palermo, after a fire that started overnight on 21 July threatened two animal shelters. Central Palermo had repeated power cuts the same week as the heat stressed the network. Smaller fires ran at Belpasso and Militello in Val di Catania, at Trabia and Casteldaccia on the Palermo coast, at Letojanni and Pagliara in Messina province, and around Carlentini, Palazzolo Acreide and Noto in the south east. The regional government put seven provinces on its highest fire code on 23 July, and the regional president Renato Schifani visited the joint operations room and asked the national government for more aerial support.
Sardinia's bad day was 31 July, when the regional forestry corps was working three large fires at once: at Padru in Gallura, in the Luriddu district, at Alghero, and in the Cagliari hinterland at Pimentel. Fires were also reported at Ozieri, Macomer, Talana, and at Furtei in the Riu Scala district, where flames crossed into Serrenti.
Two fronts developed in the Sant'Eufemia district, one along the SS18 and one running from the roundabout near the airport towards the railway station. Trains were briefly halted because the flames were close to the line, and the fire service said aircraft could not be used because houses and the railway were too close.
Which roads have been closed, and for how long?
Road closures in this event have been short and frequent rather than long and total. The pattern is a two to four hour shutdown while aircraft work overhead or while smoke sits on the carriageway, then a reopening.
The A19 Palermo to Catania motorway, the single most important road in Sicily for visitors, was closed in sections during the worst week of July. One closure hit the Palermo-bound carriageway near the Irosa junction in the Petralia Sottana area, with Catania-bound traffic taken off at Tremonzelli and put back on at Irosa. Fires reignited near the motorway on consecutive days around Carini, where drones were used to spot flare-ups.
The SS186, the state road up to Monreale from Palermo, was closed in both directions on 22 July, with traffic sent round on the SS624 Palermo to Sciacca road. The SS113 coast road was blocked the same day. The SS118 Corleonese Agrigentina was shut in both directions on the stretch through Santo Stefano Quisquina. The SS640 between Caltanissetta and Agrigento, the road most British visitors use to reach the Valley of the Temples from the interior, has had at least two fire incidents this summer: a grass fire that slowed traffic and was cleared within a couple of hours, and, according to GrandangoloAgrigento, a larger fire near the Petrusa junction that reached a filling station and forced the road to be closed while staff were moved out.
The most recent one shows the pattern intact. Anas closed the SS121 Catanese at Santa Caterina Villarmosa, in the Caltanissetta province, on the afternoon of 11 August, between kilometre 139.2 and kilometre 142.25, because a fire had come up to the roadside. Anas crews worked there with the Corpo forestale and the civil protection, and the road was given back in both directions the same evening, with traffic still slow behind it.
Sardinia's closures were on 11 July. The SS125 Orientale Sarda was shut in both directions on the stretch just south of Olbia during a fire at Padrongianus, and the SS131 Carlo Felice, the island's spine road, was closed at Uras with traffic sent round via the SS126 and a provincial road before reopening that evening.
None of these roads is closed as a standing arrangement. If you are driving in Sicily or Sardinia in August, budget for the possibility of losing an afternoon rather than for a route being unavailable.
Were Palermo, Catania, Cagliari or Olbia airports affected?
This question needs care, because the search results are full of a story that is not from this year. Palermo Falcone Borsellino at Punta Raisi did close because of fire on the surrounding hills, with flights cancelled and diverted, but that was July 2023. It has not closed for fire in 2026. Anyone reading a headline about Punta Raisi shutting should check the date on the page before rebooking.
Catania Fontanarossa did close this summer, and it was nothing to do with wildfire. Volcanic ash from Etna shut the airport from the night of 5 July into 7 July, with the airspace sectors south of the volcano closed and arrivals sent to Palermo. Catania closes for ash more often than it closes for anything else, and it is the disruption most likely to catch out a Sicily trip.
In Sardinia, Olbia Costa Smeralda suspended operations for part of the afternoon of 11 July when a fire burned close to the airport at Padrongianus. Arriving flights were diverted to Cagliari and Alghero, and departures from late afternoon ran late. Cagliari Elmas has not been closed by fire this summer.
Ferries have been the quiet success story. There have been no reported fire closures at the Sicilian or Sardinian ports, and the crossings from Civitavecchia, Livorno, Genoa, Piombino and Naples to Olbia, Golfo Aranci, Porto Torres, Arbatax and Cagliari have run to timetable, as has the weekly Grimaldi sailing between Palermo and Cagliari. The real constraint on ferries this August is price and availability rather than fire: fares to both islands are sharply up on last summer and late booking is expensive.
Is Rome, Florence, Venice or the north affected at all?
No. This is a southern and islands story, and it is worth saying plainly because the phrase "Italy wildfires" in a headline does not distinguish between a hillside above Agrigento and a city four hundred miles away.
Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, the lakes, the Dolomites, Tuscany's hill towns, the Amalfi coast and Naples are all operating normally. There is no fire closure on any of the routes between them.
Two caveats, both minor and both honest. Rome gets scrub fires on its own outskirts every summer, and one of them, on the Laurentina between EUR and Tor Pagnotta on 26 July, put enough smoke across the carriageway that the Grande Raccordo Anulare was closed in both directions between the Pontina and Laurentina exits for part of the afternoon. The city centre and its sights were unaffected.
If your itinerary is Rome, Florence and Venice, this event does not touch it.
What should I be checking each morning if I am on the islands?
Both islands publish a daily forecast of fire danger, and both are more useful than news coverage, because they tell you what today is likely to be rather than what yesterday was.
In Sicily the document is the bollettino issued by the Dipartimento della Protezione Civile of the Regione Siciliana, published on protezionecivilesicilia.it. It is numbered sequentially and covers the day of issue with an outlook for the next. Bulletin 159 covered 1 August and bulletin 160 covered 2 August, both placing all nine provinces at the orange preallerta level with medium fire danger, on the back of an African heat plume. The bulletin has stayed at that level since: it was orange with medium danger in all nine provinces again for 12 August. The same bulletins carry the heat warning, and the health ministry put Catania and Palermo at its top level for perceived temperature above the high thirties.
Sardinia's system is separate and easier to read. The regional civil protection issues a daily fire danger forecast through its Centro Funzionale Decentrato, on four colours: green for low, yellow for medium, orange for high and red for extreme. Cagliari and its metropolitan area were held at orange for both 2 and 3 August, and orange again for 11 and 12 August. Orange means that anything that ignites is expected to spread very fast and be hard to stop, which is the level at which you should not park on dry grass, should not use a barbecue outside a designated area, and should think twice about a long inland drive with no alternative route.
A practical note that catches British visitors out: on high danger days many Sardinian and Sicilian municipalities suspend outdoor burning entirely and enforce it, and hire car insurance will not help you if a fire is traced to your vehicle's exhaust parked over stubble.
What does a burnt hillside mean for a trip later in the year?
The fire going out is not the end of it, and this is the part most travel coverage skips.
Italian law puts long restrictions on burnt ground. Under the national framework law on forest fires, land recorded as burnt cannot be built on for ten years, and grazing and hunting are banned on burnt woodland for the same period. Each municipality keeps a public register of burnt parcels, the catasto incendi, and the mapping is what triggers the bans. In practice this means that a slope above a Sicilian village that burned in July will still be fenced off, signposted and legally restricted long after the smoke has gone, and local access orders on paths and forest tracks are enforced with fines.
For a walking or cycling holiday this is the thing to check before booking. Sections of the Monti Sicani, the ground around Castronovo di Sicilia and Bivona, and the Gallura hills behind Padru will have closed tracks and dead, standing pine and macchia for months. Some agriturismi and rural campsites near the burnt ground stay shut through the season for water, power or access reasons rather than fire damage.
The least obvious risk is the autumn one. Burnt slopes lose the root structure and the leaf litter that slow rainfall down, and both Sicily and Sardinia get their rain in short violent bursts from September onwards. Water that would have soaked in runs off instead, carrying ash, soil and loose rock into the first road or riverbed below. The Sicilian regional basin authority has issued a directive specifically on the combination of post-fire ground and drought-hardened soil, warning of instability if heavy rain arrives. If you are driving mountain roads in Sicily or Sardinia in October or November, particularly below ground that burned this summer, treat a heavy rain warning seriously: rockfall and mud on the carriageway is a realistic hazard on those specific stretches, and it can arrive within minutes of the rain starting.