Skip to content
worldfires
FR · France · →

Escot fire, March 2024 Escot, Oloron-Sainte-Marie

Out · last measured on 17 Mar 2024

The fire started on 17 March 2024 in Escot, France, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 144 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

This record is most likely a pastoral burn (écobuage) in the Pyrenees, not a forest fire. In winter, grassland and scrub are burnt to renew the pasture, and this fire does not appear in France's official forest fire database (BDIFF). That is why it is left out of the fire rankings.

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
144ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
17 Mar 2024 – 17 Mar 2024
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
17 Mar
2024
Danger at start
1
Very low · FWI index
Natura 2000
0%
of the perimeter is protected land

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

18°high
32km/h · peak gust
52%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 19 Mar.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 120 ha in 2019, 93 ha in 2020, 123 ha in 2021, 134 ha in 2022, 129 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 144 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Escot 118 inhabitants · 3.7 km from the town where it started
    136 ha
    6.0 %
  2. Oloron-Sainte-Marie 10,684 inhabitants · 10.3 km from the town
    8 ha
    0.1 %

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

  • Other natural land89 %
  • Broadleaved forest9.9 %
  • Mixed forest1.4 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 0 %

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 Mar 17.9 °C 52 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
18 Mar after 16.7 °C 61 % 23 km/h 0.4 mm Very low 1
19 Mar after 18.8 °C 56 % 27 km/h 1.8 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Mar 2024
After · 24 Mar 2024

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 20 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1084 µg/m³
Optical depth0.63
151617181920
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 France ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Escot fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 17 March 2024 and 17 March 2024: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 144 hectares (1.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Escot (136 ha, 6.0 %); Oloron-Sainte-Marie (8 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 3.7 km of Escot. 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 17.9 °C, humidity dropped to 52 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 1, class Very low.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of France (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 · 18

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
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 · 18.

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 ADM5 (Open Data Commons Attribution 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.