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Artigues fire, July 2017 Seillons-Source-d'Argens, Artigues, Esparron

Out · last detection 28 Jul 2017, 01:14 UTC

The fire started on 24 July 2017 in Artigues, France, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,071 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 6 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Var since 2016 (of 16 with a page). Number 2 in France in 2017, of 27.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barjols · 2026Correns · 2026Correns · 2026Pontevès · 2026

Burnt area
2,071ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
5days
24 Jul 2017 – 28 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
6
communes
Started on
24 Jul
2017
Heat detections
69
in a single hotspot: 340 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
584MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jul28 Jul
28 Jul 2017

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jul 2017 · 2,212 MW · 43 26 Jul 2017 · 49 MW · 5 27 Jul 2017 · 74 MW · 20 28 Jul 2017 · 1 MW · 1
25 Jul 26 Jul 27 Jul 28 Jul

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

32°high
78km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 6 Aug.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Seillons-Source-d'Argens 2,818 inhabitants · 1.2 km from the centre
    684 ha reached on 25 Jul
    27 %
  2. Artigues 282 inhabitants · 2.8 km from the centre where it started
    535 ha reached on 25 Jul
    16 %
  3. Esparron 377 inhabitants · 2.9 km from the centre
    433 ha reached on 25 Jul
    14 %
  4. Saint-Martin-de-Pallières 284 inhabitants · 3.6 km from the centre
    276 ha reached on 25 Jul
    10 %
  5. Ollières 636 inhabitants · 4.4 km from the centre
    130 ha reached on 25 Jul
    3.3 %
  6. Brue-Auriac 1,463 inhabitants · 4.2 km from the centre
    13 ha
    0.4 %

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 land80 %
  • Broadleaved forest15 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub3.7 %
  • Agricultural areas1.8 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 16 %

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 2015
Built-up area4.1 ha
Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.1 hectares of built-up land and about 200 residents (GHSL 2015, 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

Official record

According to BDIFF, a fire of 1,704 ha was recorded in Artigues on 24 July 2017 (the satellite measured 2,071 ha). The record has no coordinates, so it was matched by municipality and date.

BDIFF (Base de Données sur les Incendies de Forêts en France). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.

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 Jul 27.3 °C 34 % 71 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Jul 25.7 °C 31 % 78 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
26 Jul 27.0 °C 26 % 72 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
27 Jul 30.0 °C 28 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Jul 31.8 °C 19 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Jul after 28.6 °C 43 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Jul after 28.4 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
31 Jul after 32.1 °C 33 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Aug after 31.2 °C 36 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Aug after 31.7 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Aug after 32.6 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Aug after 34.5 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
5 Aug after 35.3 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Aug after 30.2 °C 28 % 51 km/h 1.5 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 17 Jul 2017
After · 4 Aug 2017

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 · 69Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in France ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Artigues fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 24 July 2017 and 28 July 2017: 5 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,071 hectares (20.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 6 municipalities: Seillons-Source-d'Argens (684 ha, 27 %); Artigues (535 ha, 16 %); Esparron (433 ha, 14 %); Saint-Martin-de-Pallières (276 ha, 10 %); Ollières (130 ha, 3.3 %); Brue-Auriac (13 ha, 0.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 1.2 km of the centre of Seillons-Source-d'Argens, 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 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 78 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.
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.

RSS Changes to this page

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
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112 · 18.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 69 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with BDIFF: 1,704 official ha against 2,071 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • 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 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.