Beşiri fire, July 2020 Batman · Beşiri, Kurtalan
The fire started on 17 July 2020 in Beşiri, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 689 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 2th largest in Batman since 2016 (of 41 with a page). Number 24 in Türkiye in 2020, of 212.
Compare with…
We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 689ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 17 Jul 2020 – 17 Jul 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 17 Jul
- 2020
- Danger at start
- 48
- Very high · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 36 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
-
372 ha0.4 %
-
318 ha0.4 %
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
- Agricultural areas100 %
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 were about 0.11 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Jul | 39.7 °C | 10 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 18 Jul after | 40.9 °C | 13 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 19 Jul after | 40.3 °C | 6 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 20 Jul after | 41.0 °C | 8 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 21 Jul after | 41.2 °C | 10 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 22 Jul after | 40.3 °C | 13 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 23 Jul after | 40.5 °C | 14 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 24 Jul after | 40.2 °C | 15 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 25 Jul after | 39.9 °C | 15 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 26 Jul after | 40.2 °C | 14 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 27 Jul after | 40.8 °C | 15 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
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.
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Beşiri fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 17 July 2020 and 17 July 2020: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 689 hectares (6.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Beşiri (372 ha, 0.4 %); Kurtalan (318 ha, 0.4 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 6.9 km of the centre of Kurtalan, 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 39.7 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 25 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 Türkiye (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. No 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.
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 ADM2 (Open Data Commons Open Database 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.