فريانة fire, 5 August 2017 فريانة
The fire started on 5 August 2017 in فريانة, Tunisia, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 131 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 27th largest in Kasserine since 2016 (of 32 with a page). Number 25 in Tunisia in 2017, of 31.
The power measured by the satellite is low (25.3 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 131ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 5 Aug 2017 – 6 Aug 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- delegations
- Started on
- 5 Aug
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 11
- in a single hotspot: 25 MW
- Danger at start
- 47
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 78MW
- detected power per day, on average
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 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 13 Aug.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
What happened to each town
-
فريانة where it started132 ha reached on 5 Aug0.1 %
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
- Coniferous forest80 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland20 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Aug | 36.7 °C | 12 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 6 Aug | 37.1 °C | 11 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 7 Aug after | 35.7 °C | 12 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 8 Aug after | 36.4 °C | 12 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 9 Aug after | 35.5 °C | 13 % | 48 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 10 Aug after | 36.7 °C | 12 % | 53 km/h | 0.6 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 11 Aug after | 31.6 °C | 27 % | 36 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 32 |
| 12 Aug after | 30.6 °C | 26 % | 24 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 28 |
| 13 Aug after | 30.7 °C | 29 % | 29 km/h | 2.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
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 · 11Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,426 haالقصرين الجنوبية21 June 2021 · 6 days · 5 km away
- 1,072 haالقصرين الشماليةJuly 2019 · 5 days · 11 km away
- 1,310 haالقصرين الجنوبيةJuly 2021 · 6 days · 22 km away
- 2,255 haالقصرين الجنوبية26 June 2021 · 12 days · 27 km away
- 1,730 haالقصرين الجنوبيةJune 2020 · 6 days · 27 km away
- 1,783 haالقصرين الجنوبيةJuly 2020 · 5 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the فريانة fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 5 August 2017 and 6 August 2017: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 131 hectares (1.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered فريانة (132 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Tunisia (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: 198 · 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. 11 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.
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.