Etchebar fire, February 2020 Etchebar, Licq-Athérey
The fire started on 24 February 2020 in Etchebar, France, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 199 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.
The power measured by the satellite is low (8.6 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
- 199ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 24 Feb 2020 – 24 Feb 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 24 Feb
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 4
- in a single hotspot: 9 MW
- Danger at start
- 6
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 22MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
24 Feb 2020 · 22 MW · 4
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 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.1 mm on 25 Feb.
This area had burned before
60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 120 ha in 2019.
What happened to each town
-
114 ha reached on 24 Feb14 %
-
Licq-Athérey 194 inhabitants · 2.3 km from the centre85 ha4.7 %
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 land74 %
- Broadleaved forest26 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 4 %
- LIC Le Saison (cours d'eau) FR7200790
- LIC Montagnes du Pic des Escaliers FR7200751
Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Feb | 18.8 °C | 28 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 25 Feb after | 11.5 °C | 59 % | 41 km/h | 4.1 mm | Very low 0 |
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.
Detections table · 4Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,172 haLarrau24 February 2026 · 7 days · 4 km away
- 1,316 haAussurucqFebruary 2026 · 7 days · 10 km away
- 2,916 haMendiveFebruary 2019 · 9 days · 17 km away
- 1,965 haLecumberry14 February 2019 · 9 days · 18 km away
- 1,379 haEstérençubyFebruary 2021 · 7 days · 18 km away
- 1,120 haHostaFebruary 2019 · 14 days · 18 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Etchebar fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 24 February 2020 and 24 February 2020: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 199 hectares (2.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Etchebar (114 ha, 14 %); Licq-Athérey (85 ha, 4.7 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 2.3 km of the centre of Licq-Athérey, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 18.8 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 24 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 6, class 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 · 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. 4 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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
- Probably a vegetation burn: not counted in the totals.
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.