Accous fire, February 2023 Accous, Bedous
The fire started on 15 February 2023 in Accous, France, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 433 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
This record is most likely a pastoral burn (écobuage) in the Pyrenees, not a forest fire. In winter, grassland and scrub are burnt to renew the pasture, and this fire does not appear in France's official forest fire database (BDIFF). That is why it is left out of the fire rankings.
The power measured by the satellite is low (14.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
- Burnt area
- 433ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 15 Feb 2023 – 16 Feb 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 15 Feb
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 9
- in a single hotspot: 15 MW
- Danger at start
- 2
- Very low · FWI index
- Energy released
- 77MW
- sum of detected power
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 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 21 Feb.
This area had burned before
92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 296 ha in 2019, 305 ha in 2020, 433 ha in 2021, 338 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 399 ha that had burned before.
- 433 ha Accous fire, February 2021 503 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 308 ha Accous fire, January 2022 334 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 305 ha Accous fire, February 2020 337 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 234 ha Accous fire, February 2019 245 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Accous where it started425 ha reached on 15 Feb7.0 %
-
Bedous 568 inhabitants · 1.2 km from the town8 ha0.7 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
What burned
- Other natural land86 %
- Agricultural areas8.9 %
- Mixed forest3.3 %
- Broadleaved forest2.1 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 67 %
- LIC Massif de Sesques et de l'Ossau FR7200744
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 Feb | 9.9 °C | 35 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 16 Feb | 9.7 °C | 41 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 17 Feb after | 10.8 °C | 40 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 18 Feb after | 13.7 °C | 38 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 19 Feb after | 11.3 °C | 55 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 20 Feb after | 14.0 °C | 48 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 21 Feb after | 11.4 °C | 52 % | 35 km/h | 1.8 mm | Very low 0 |
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 17 February 2023 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 9Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Accous fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 15 February 2023 and 16 February 2023: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 433 hectares (4.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Accous (425 ha, 7.0 %); Bedous (8 ha, 0.7 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The closest fire to a town centre came within 1.2 km of Bedous. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 9.9 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 2, class Very low.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of France (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 · 18
Satellite cross-check
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.
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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 ADM5 (Open Data Commons Attribution License 1.0). 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.