Aincille fire, March 2021 Estérençuby, Aincille, Saint-Michel
The fire started on 30 March 2021 in Aincille, France, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 232 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 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 (3.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
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- Burnt area
- 232ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 30 Mar 2021 – 30 Mar 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- communes
- Started on
- 30 Mar
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 7
- in a single hotspot: 4 MW
- Danger at start
- 8
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 11MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
30 Mar 2021 · 11 MW · 7
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 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.1 mm on 9 Apr.
This area had burned before
90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 208 ha in 2019.
What happened to each town
-
Estérençuby 303 inhabitants · 0.8 km from the centre135 ha reached on 30 Mar2.9 %
-
62 ha reached on 30 Mar10.0 %
-
Saint-Michel 290 inhabitants · 1.7 km from the centre35 ha1.2 %
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
- Other natural land84 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland15 %
- Agricultural areas1.3 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 68 %
- LIC La Nive FR7200786
- LIC Montagnes de Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port FR7200754
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Mar | 22.8 °C | 30 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 31 Mar after | 23.5 °C | 25 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 1 Apr after | 22.5 °C | 30 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 2 Apr after | 18.9 °C | 46 % | 33 km/h | 0.7 mm | Low 6 |
| 3 Apr after | 14.1 °C | 69 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 4 Apr after | 13.8 °C | 49 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 5 |
| 5 Apr after | 15.8 °C | 53 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 5 |
| 6 Apr after | 9.0 °C | 63 % | 44 km/h | 0.5 mm | Low 5 |
| 7 Apr after | 11.8 °C | 37 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 8 Apr after | 18.1 °C | 44 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 9 Apr after | 12.4 °C | 65 % | 56 km/h | 3.1 mm | Very low 1 |
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 · 7Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,074 haAhaxe-Alciette-BascassanFebruary 2019 · 8 days · 2 km away
- 1,965 haLecumberry14 February 2019 · 9 days · 8 km away
- 1,379 haEstérençubyFebruary 2021 · 7 days · 8 km away
- 2,916 haMendiveFebruary 2019 · 9 days · 9 km away
- 1,051 haSaint-Étienne-de-Baïgorry15 February 2019 · 6 days · 10 km away
- 1,120 haHostaFebruary 2019 · 14 days · 12 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Aincille fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 30 March 2021 and 30 March 2021: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 232 hectares (2.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Estérençuby (135 ha, 2.9 %); Aincille (62 ha, 10.0 %); Saint-Michel (35 ha, 1.2 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 0.8 km of the centre of Estérençuby, the closest of the areas it touched. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 22.8 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 8, class 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
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.
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How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 7 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.
- Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.
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.