Brasparts fire, July 2022 Brasparts, Saint-Rivoal, Commana
The fire started on 18 July 2022 in Brasparts, France, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,843 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 6 municipalities.
Number 6 in France in 2022, of 49.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,843ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 7days
- 18 Jul 2022 – 24 Jul 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 6
- communes
- Started on
- 18 Jul
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 98
- in a single hotspot: 199 MW
- Danger at start
- 37
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 368MW
- 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 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 25 Jul.
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
-
531 ha reached on 18 Jul11 %
-
Saint-Rivoal 223 inhabitants · 2.1 km from the centre397 ha reached on 19 Jul21 %
-
Commana 983 inhabitants · 1.8 km from the centre358 ha reached on 19 Jul8.8 %
-
Sizun 2,325 inhabitants · 8.8 km from the centre280 ha reached on 19 Jul4.8 %
-
Botmeur 224 inhabitants · 2.0 km from the centre265 ha reached on 19 Jul19 %
-
Loqueffret 336 inhabitants · 4.1 km from the centre11 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
- Other natural land91 %
- Coniferous forest3.8 %
- Agricultural areas2.7 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland2.2 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 90 %
- LIC Monts d'Arrée centre et est FR5300013
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 were about 0.36 hectares of 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
Official record
According to BDIFF, a fire of 1,917 ha was recorded in Brasparts on 24 July 2022 (the satellite measured 1,843 ha). The record has no coordinates, so it was matched by municipality and date.
- Brasparts 24 July 2022 · 23:28 1,917 ha
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Jul | 37.8 °C | 16 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 19 Jul | 25.1 °C | 46 % | 62 km/h | 2.1 mm | Low 9 |
| 20 Jul | 19.4 °C | 75 % | 39 km/h | 0.9 mm | Low 5 |
| 21 Jul | 21.7 °C | 51 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 22 Jul | 20.1 °C | 53 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 23 Jul | 20.3 °C | 65 % | 39 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 24 Jul | 22.9 °C | 57 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 25 Jul after | 19.0 °C | 65 % | 53 km/h | 1.5 mm | Low 7 |
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 · 98Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Brasparts fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 July 2022 to 24 July 2022 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 July 2022 to 20 July 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,843 hectares (18.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 6 municipalities: Brasparts (531 ha, 11 %); Saint-Rivoal (397 ha, 21 %); Commana (358 ha, 8.8 %); Sizun (280 ha, 4.8 %); Botmeur (265 ha, 19 %); Loqueffret (11 ha, 0.4 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 1.8 km of the centre of Commana, 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 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Matched to the official record from BDIFF.
- Last day with fire: 20 July 2022 → 24 July 2022.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 18 July 2022 to 20 July 2022. 98 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with BDIFF: 1,917 official ha against 1,843 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 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 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.