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Fahs-Anjra fire, July 2023 إقليم الفحص أنجرة · Fahs-Anjra

Out · last detection 13 Jul 2023, 12:38 UTC

The fire started on 12 July 2023 in Fahs-Anjra, Morocco, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 165 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 40th largest in Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima since 2016 (of 53 with a page). Number 10 in Morocco in 2023, of 13.

Compare with…

Suggestions: M'diq-Fnideq · 2020Tarifa · 2025Tarifa · 2024Tangier-Assilah · 2020

Burnt area
165ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
12 Jul 2023 – 13 Jul 2023
Municipalities hit
1
provinces
Started on
12 Jul
2023
Heat detections
2
in a single hotspot: 116 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
61MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jul13 Jul
13 Jul 2023

How it evolved, day by day

12 Jul 2023 · 116 MW · 1 13 Jul 2023 · 6 MW · 1
12 Jul 13 Jul

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

33°high
37km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 18 ha in 2019.

What happened to each town

  1. Fahs-Anjra إقليم الفحص أنجرة 100,789 inhabitants · 19.1 km from the centre where it started
    165 ha reached on 12 Jul
    0.2 %

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

  • Mixed forest94 %
  • Other natural land2.4 %
  • Agricultural areas1.8 %
  • Broadleaved forest1.2 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland0.6 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
12 Jul 32.1 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
13 Jul 33.3 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
14 Jul after 28.7 °C 66 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
15 Jul after 27.6 °C 56 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
16 Jul after 30.9 °C 38 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
17 Jul after 28.5 °C 65 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
18 Jul after 30.5 °C 54 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
19 Jul after 33.0 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
20 Jul after 29.7 °C 44 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
21 Jul after 27.5 °C 45 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Jul after 28.8 °C 42 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
23 Jul after 28.9 °C 51 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Jul 2023
After · 20 Jul 2023

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 11 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 25 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak25 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1059 µg/m³
Optical depth0.61
10111213141516
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)

Detections table · 2Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Morocco ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Fahs-Anjra fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 12 July 2023 and 13 July 2023: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 165 hectares (1.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Fahs-Anjra (165 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Fahs-Anjra and came within 19.1 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 33.3 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 37 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 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 · 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 15 · 150.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 2 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.