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Doğubayazıt fire, 17 July 2018 Doğubayazıt

Out · last measured on 19 Jul 2018

The fire started on 17 July 2018 in Doğubayazıt, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,052 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2th largest in Ağrı since 2016 (of 33 with a page). Number 3 in Türkiye in 2018, of 104.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Doğubayazıt · 2017Doğubayazıt · 2017Doğubayazıt · 2019Doğubayazıt · 2022

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
1,052ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
17 Jul 2018 – 19 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
17 Jul
2018
Danger at start
4
Very low · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

31°high
38km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.3 mm on 22 Jul.

This area had burned before

38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 397 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (11 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Doğubayazıt 121,263 inhabitants · 33.9 km from the centre where it started
    1,053 ha
    0.5 %

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

  • Other natural land100 %

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)
17 Jul 22.3 °C 48 % 35 km/h 3.5 mm Very low 4
18 Jul 27.1 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
19 Jul 31.0 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Jul after 32.2 °C 5 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Jul after 28.4 °C 16 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Jul after 26.4 °C 38 % 42 km/h 5.3 mm Low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Jul 2018
After · 26 Jul 2018

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 15 July 2018 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1037 µg/m³
1516171819202122
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Türkiye ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Doğubayazıt fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 17 July 2018 and 19 July 2018: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,052 hectares (10.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Doğubayazıt (1,053 ha, 0.5 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Doğubayazıt and came within 33.9 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 31.0 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class 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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.