Driouch fire, August 2019 إقليم الدريوش · Driouch
The fire started on 9 August 2019 in Driouch, Morocco, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,381 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 3th largest in Oriental since 2016 (of 10 with a page). The largest in Morocco in 2019, of 7.
- Burnt area
- 1,381ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 3days
- 9 Aug 2019 – 11 Aug 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- provinces
- Started on
- 9 Aug
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 84
- in a single hotspot: 124 MW
- Danger at start
- 44
- Very high · FWI index
- Energy released
- 1.1GW
- sum of detected power
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 55 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
What happened to each town
-
1,386 ha reached on 9 Aug0.5 %
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
- Mixed forest48 %
- Agricultural areas40 %
- Other natural land6.5 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland5.3 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
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 Aug | 31.4 °C | 19 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 10 Aug | 32.1 °C | 20 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 11 Aug | 27.4 °C | 25 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 12 Aug after | 28.1 °C | 18 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 13 Aug after | 26.8 °C | 15 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 14 Aug after | 27.8 °C | 41 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 15 Aug after | 28.1 °C | 38 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 16 Aug after | 29.2 °C | 18 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 17 Aug after | 30.9 °C | 18 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 18 Aug after | 28.8 °C | 29 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 19 Aug after | 29.5 °C | 19 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 20 Aug after | 27.6 °C | 21 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 21 Aug after | 25.5 °C | 45 % | 49 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 29 |
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 10 August 2019 the air beside the fire reached 37 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 27: 1.8 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 · 84Every 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 Driouch fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 9 August 2019 and 11 August 2019: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,381 hectares (13.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Driouch (1,386 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.1 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Morocco (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: 15 · 150
Satellite cross-check
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
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.