A'zaz fire, May 2021 A'zaz, Afrin
The fire started on 23 May 2021 in A'zaz, Syria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 841 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 14th largest in Aleppo since 2016 (of 59 with a page). Number 7 in Syria in 2021, of 23.
The power measured by the satellite is low (7.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 841ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 4days
- 23 May 2021 – 26 May 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- subdistricts
- Started on
- 23 May
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 4
- in a single hotspot: 8 MW
- Danger at start
- 49
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 25MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
23 May 2021 · 25 MW · 4
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 40 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).
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).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
A'zaz where it started796 ha reached on 23 May4.4 %
-
47 ha0.1 %
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
- Agricultural areas76 %
- Other natural land21 %
- Artificial surfaces2.9 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 9.1 hectares of built-up land and about 750 residents (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 May | 28.2 °C | 25 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 24 May | 31.9 °C | 17 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 25 May | 34.5 °C | 18 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 26 May | 35.8 °C | 11 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 27 May after | 34.4 °C | 16 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 28 May after | 31.0 °C | 30 % | 53 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 29 May after | 28.3 °C | 34 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 30 May after | 31.2 °C | 27 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 31 May after | 34.9 °C | 13 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 1 Jun after | 29.7 °C | 25 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 2 Jun after | 27.0 °C | 28 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 3 Jun after | 29.2 °C | 25 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 4 Jun after | 31.5 °C | 19 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 5 Jun after | 30.7 °C | 21 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
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.
Detections table · 4Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 225 haKilis (merkez) Kilis MerkezAugust 2026 · 26 days · 19 km away
- 212 haKilis (merkez) Kilis MerkezJune 2024 · 1 day · 25 km away
- 243 haDaret AzzaMay 2021 · 1 day · 30 km away
- 220 haDaret Azza17 May 2024 · 5 days · 31 km away
- 231 haMusabeyliAugust 2024 · 1 day · 35 km away
- 243 haRajuJuly 2024 · 3 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the A'zaz fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 23 May 2021 and 26 May 2021: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 841 hectares (8.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: A'zaz (796 ha, 4.4 %); Afrin (47 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Syria (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.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 4 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.