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Çukurca fire, September 2019 Çukurca

Out · last detection 4 Sept 2019, 10:55 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2019 in Çukurca, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 273 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 30th largest in Hakkâri since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 48 in Türkiye in 2019, of 138.

The power measured by the satellite is low (21.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Çukurca · 2016Al-Amadiya · 2017Al-Amadiya · 2019Al-Amadiya · 2020

Burnt area
273ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
5days
1 Sept 2019 – 5 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
1 Sept
2019
Heat detections
14
in a single hotspot: 21 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
28MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept5 Sept
4 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 2019 · 1 MW · 1 2 Sept 2019 · 8 MW · 1 3 Sept 2019 · 27 MW · 6 4 Sept 2019 · 75 MW · 6
1 Sept 2 Sept 3 Sept 4 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
44km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

7% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12 ha in 2016, 17 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 19 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Çukurca 17,216 inhabitants · 18.6 km from the centre where it started
    273 ha reached on 1 Sept
    0.3 %

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

  • Scrub and transitional woodland67 %
  • Other natural land24 %
  • Broadleaved forest9.4 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

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)
1 Sept 30.0 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Sept 29.7 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Sept 30.2 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Sept 30.5 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Sept 29.9 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
6 Sept after 31.0 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Sept after 30.1 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Sept after 27.4 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Sept after 27.0 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
10 Sept after 27.5 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Sept after 26.7 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Sept after 26.5 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Sept after 26.4 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Sept after 27.9 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Sept after 29.7 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Aug 2019
After · 12 Sept 2019

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 6 September 2019 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak28 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM1048 µg/m³
303112345678
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 Türkiye ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Çukurca fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 1 September 2019 and 5 September 2019: 5 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 273 hectares (2.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Çukurca (273 ha, 0.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Çukurca and came within 18.6 km of its centre. 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 30.5 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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.

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 14 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.

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 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.