As-Suqaylabiyah fire, July 2016 As-Suqaylabiyah, Tell Salhib
The fire started on 14 July 2016 in As-Suqaylabiyah, Syria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 650 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 17th largest in Hama since 2016 (of 37 with a page). The largest in Syria in 2016, of 4.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 650ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 4days
- 14 Jul 2016 – 17 Jul 2016
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- subdistricts
- Started on
- 14 Jul
- 2016
- Heat detections
- 38
- in a single hotspot: 98 MW
- Danger at start
- 31
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 251MW
- 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 32 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
-
As-Suqaylabiyah where it started606 ha reached on 14 Jul2.7 %
-
45 ha reached on 16 Jul0.2 %
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 land53 %
- Agricultural areas25 %
- Mixed forest14 %
- Coniferous forest7.1 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2015Inside the perimeter there were about 0.17 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 Jul | 34.6 °C | 42 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 15 Jul | 34.5 °C | 42 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 16 Jul | 36.0 °C | 35 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 17 Jul | 34.3 °C | 43 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 18 Jul after | 31.9 °C | 51 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 19 Jul after | 33.4 °C | 40 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 20 Jul after | 32.4 °C | 44 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 21 Jul after | 32.4 °C | 48 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 22 Jul after | 31.5 °C | 52 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 23 Jul after | 32.5 °C | 51 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 24 Jul after | 32.4 °C | 55 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 25 Jul after | 34.1 °C | 42 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 26 Jul after | 34.1 °C | 45 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 27 Jul after | 34.5 °C | 43 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
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 · 38Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,500 haTell SalhibAugust 2025 · 8 days · 6 km away
- 5,148 haBeit YashoutAugust 2025 · 8 days · 12 km away
- 1,742 haMadiq Castle4 June 2021 · 13 days · 12 km away
- 2,194 haMadiq Castle8 June 2021 · 14 days · 17 km away
- 1,218 haJobet BerghalOctober 2020 · 4 days · 24 km away
- 3,654 haSalanfaJuly 2020 · 1 day · 26 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the As-Suqaylabiyah fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 14 July 2016 and 17 July 2016: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 650 hectares (6.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: As-Suqaylabiyah (606 ha, 2.7 %); Tell Salhib (45 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class High.
- 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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 38 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 2015, 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.