How long did the Çukurca fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 14 July 2021 and 16 July 2021: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 251 hectares (2.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Çukurca (251 ha, 0.3 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The closest fire to a town centre came within 15.6 km of Çukurca. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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.

TR · Türkiye · 2021-07-14 → 2021-07-16

Çukurca fire, 14 July 2021 Çukurca

Out · last detection 16 Jul 2021, 09:46 UTC

The fire started on 14 July 2021 in Çukurca, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 251 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 33th largest in Hakkâri since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 72 in Türkiye in 2021, of 138.

The power measured by the satellite is low (11.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 251ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 3days; 14 Jul 2021 – 16 Jul 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 14 Jul; 2021
Heat detections: 9; in a single hotspot: 12 MW
Danger at start: 43; Very high · FWI index
Energy released: 41MW; sum of detected power

Play back 16 Jul 2021

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Jul16 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

141516

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

The weather it burned in

34°high

44km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 49 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7 ha in 2018, 82 ha in 2019, 64 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 128 ha that had burned before.

64 ha Çukurca fire, July 2020 193 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Çukurca 17,216 inhabitants · 15.6 km from the town where it started

251 ha reached on 14 Jul

0.3 %

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

Scrub and transitional woodland79 %
Other natural land21 %

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)
14 Jul	34.0 °C	22 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
15 Jul	32.0 °C	23 %	44 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 43
16 Jul	31.0 °C	25 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
17 Jul after	33.3 °C	20 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
18 Jul after	35.2 °C	16 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
19 Jul after	36.0 °C	15 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
20 Jul after	38.0 °C	15 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
21 Jul after	36.9 °C	15 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
22 Jul after	34.0 °C	18 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
23 Jul after	34.8 °C	21 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
24 Jul after	34.6 °C	16 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
25 Jul after	35.0 °C	19 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
26 Jul after	36.5 °C	18 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Jul 2021

After · 23 Jul 2021

Before After

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 16 July 2021 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak28 µg/m³

Days over the guideline6 days

PM1054 µg/m³

WHO 15

1213141516171819

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 · 9Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Türkiye ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Çukurca fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 14 July 2021 and 16 July 2021: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 251 hectares (2.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Çukurca (251 ha, 0.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The closest fire to a town centre came within 15.6 km of Çukurca. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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

OGM · Orman Genel Müdürlüğü ↗
AFAD ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What really happened?

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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.

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.

Where it burned