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برقو fire, July 2025 الفحص, برقو, بوعرادة

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2025, 12:44 UTC

The fire started on 23 July 2025 in برقو, Tunisia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,952 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 3th largest in Siliana since 2016 (of 10 with a page). The largest in Tunisia in 2025, of 12.

Burnt area
1,952ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
23 Jul 2025 – 25 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
3
delegations
Started on
23 Jul
2025
Heat detections
14
in a single hotspot: 236 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jul25 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

23

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
49km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 2 Aug.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. 1,041 ha
    1.1 %
  2. برقو where it started
    705 ha reached on 23 Jul
    1.6 %
  3. 210 ha
    0.6 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Coniferous forest63 %
  • Agricultural areas20 %
  • Mixed forest8.9 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland5.5 %
  • Broadleaved forest1.8 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub0.6 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

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)
23 Jul 38.5 °C 23 % 34 km/h 1.4 mm High 34
24 Jul 39.6 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 45
25 Jul 39.1 °C 19 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
26 Jul after 28.2 °C 39 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Jul after 27.8 °C 42 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Jul after 30.2 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Jul after 27.4 °C 35 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Jul after 27.6 °C 36 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
31 Jul after 29.0 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
1 Aug after 32.1 °C 38 % 26 km/h 0.8 mm High 28
2 Aug after 31.1 °C 46 % 27 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Jul 2025
After · 1 Aug 2025

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 · Copernicus

On 24 July 2025 the air beside the fire reached 13 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak13 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1043 µg/m³
Optical depth0.76
2122232425262728
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 14Every 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 Tunisia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the برقو fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 23 July 2025 and 25 July 2025: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,952 hectares (19.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: الفحص (1,041 ha, 1.1 %); برقو (705 ha, 1.6 %); بوعرادة (210 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Tunisia (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: 198

Satellite cross-check

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 198.

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.