Artajona fire, August 2023 Mendigorría, Obanos, Puente la Reina/Gares
The fire started on 24 August 2023 in Artajona, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 587 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 5 municipalities.
It is the 6th largest in Navarre since 2016 (of 26 with a page). Number 17 in Spain in 2023, of 124.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 587ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 24 Aug 2023 – 25 Aug 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 5
- municipalities
- Started on
- 24 Aug
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 7
- in a single hotspot: 32 MW
- Danger at start
- 52
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 26MW
- detected power per day, on average
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 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.5 mm on 26 Aug.
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).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
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
-
Mendigorría 1,261 inhabitants · 0.9 km from the centre309 ha reached on 25 Aug7.8 %
-
Obanos 924 inhabitants · 4.1 km from the centre205 ha10 %
-
Puente la Reina/Gares 2,972 inhabitants · 2.8 km from the centre68 ha reached on 25 Aug1.7 %
-
6 ha reached on 24 Aug0.1 %
-
Añorbe 622 inhabitants · 6.3 km from the centre0 ha0.0 %
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 areas70 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub26 %
- Coniferous forest4.2 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.25 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Aug | 40.9 °C | 15 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 25 Aug | 28.1 °C | 49 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 26 Aug after | 24.6 °C | 51 % | 45 km/h | 6.5 mm | Low 6 |
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 24 August 2023 the air beside the fire reached 16 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 · 7Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 329 haEnériz/EneritzAugust 2025 · 2 days · 5 km away
- 3,617 haPueyoAugust 2016 · 3 days · 9 km away
- 6,531 haLegarda Puente la Reina/GaresJune 2022 · 4 days · 10 km away
- 347 haTafallaJune 2022 · 1 day · 14 km away
- 343 haLerínJuly 2020 · 1 day · 19 km away
- 7,144 haSan Martín de UnxJune 2022 · 3 days · 26 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Artajona fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 24 August 2023 and 25 August 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 587 hectares (5.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 5 municipalities: Mendigorría (309 ha, 7.8 %); Obanos (205 ha, 10 %); Puente la Reina/Gares (68 ha, 1.7 %); Artajona (6 ha, 0.1 %); Añorbe (0 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 0.9 km of the centre of Mendigorría, 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 40.9 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Spain (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 · 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.
Report an error
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 2025, 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 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.