Çukurca fire, 7 July 2021 Çukurca
The fire started on 7 July 2021 in Çukurca, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 486 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 14th largest in Hakkâri since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 40 in Türkiye in 2021, of 138.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 486ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 5days
- 7 Jul 2021 – 11 Jul 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 7 Jul
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 19
- in a single hotspot: 48 MW
- Danger at start
- 42
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 44MW
- 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 44 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
37% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 130 ha in 2016, 45 ha in 2018, 3 ha in 2019.
What happened to each town
-
487 ha reached on 7 Jul0.6 %
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 woodland74 %
- Other natural land26 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 Jul | 33.8 °C | 16 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 10 Jul | 33.7 °C | 15 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 11 Jul | 33.2 °C | 17 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 12 Jul after | 33.8 °C | 13 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 13 Jul after | 34.7 °C | 14 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 14 Jul after | 33.5 °C | 22 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 15 Jul after | 31.4 °C | 23 % | 44 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 42 |
| 16 Jul after | 30.5 °C | 25 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 17 Jul after | 32.7 °C | 20 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 18 Jul after | 34.7 °C | 16 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 19 Jul after | 35.4 °C | 15 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 20 Jul after | 37.4 °C | 15 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 14 July 2021 the air beside the fire reached 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 19Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,623 haAl-AmadiyaSeptember 2017 · 4 days · 22 km away
- 1,500 haAl-Amadiya1 August 2019 · 5 days · 30 km away
- 1,473 haAl-AmadiyaJuly 2019 · 4 days · 30 km away
- 1,725 haAl-AmadiyaSeptember 2020 · 5 days · 31 km away
- 3,718 haAl-Amadiya24 August 2021 · 14 days · 36 km away
- 1,470 haAl-ZibarSeptember 2021 · 6 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Çukurca fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 July 2021 to 11 July 2021 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 July 2021 to 10 July 2021.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 486 hectares (4.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Çukurca (487 ha, 0.6 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Çukurca and came within 2.8 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 33.8 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 9 July 2021 to 10 July 2021. 19 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.
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.