Çukurca fire, 19 July 2021 Çukurca, Yüksekova
The fire started on 19 July 2021 in Çukurca, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 613 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 8th largest in Hakkâri since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 30 in Türkiye in 2021, of 138.
The power measured by the satellite is low (22.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
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- Burnt area
- 613ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 4days
- 19 Jul 2021 – 22 Jul 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 19 Jul
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 38
- in a single hotspot: 22 MW
- Danger at start
- 42
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 83MW
- 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 54 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 239 ha in 2018, 113 ha in 2019, 43 ha in 2020.
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
-
587 ha reached on 19 Jul0.7 %
-
Yüksekova 119,760 inhabitants · 48.0 km from the centre26 ha reached on 22 Jul0.0 %
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 woodland58 %
- Broadleaved forest26 %
- Other natural land9.0 %
- Agricultural areas5.9 %
- Other land cover1.2 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Jul | 35.0 °C | 15 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 20 Jul | 36.9 °C | 14 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 21 Jul | 36.1 °C | 15 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 22 Jul | 33.0 °C | 17 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 23 Jul after | 34.0 °C | 20 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 24 Jul after | 33.8 °C | 14 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 25 Jul after | 34.4 °C | 18 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 26 Jul after | 35.6 °C | 18 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 27 Jul after | 36.0 °C | 15 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 28 Jul after | 35.2 °C | 13 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 29 Jul after | 30.4 °C | 29 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 30 Jul after | 31.3 °C | 21 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 31 Jul after | 31.1 °C | 25 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 1 Aug after | 32.1 °C | 23 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
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 22 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 · 38Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Çukurca fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 19 July 2021 and 22 July 2021: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 613 hectares (6.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Çukurca (587 ha, 0.7 %); Yüksekova (26 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Çukurca and came within 25.4 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 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 38 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.