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غار الدماء fire, August 2020 غار الدماء, ساقية سيدي يوسف

Out · last detection 23 Aug 2020, 11:59 UTC

The fire started on 22 August 2020 in غار الدماء, Tunisia, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 142 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 22th largest in Jendouba since 2016 (of 32 with a page). Number 17 in Tunisia in 2020, of 20.

Compare with…

Suggestions: ساقية سيدي يوسف · 2021ساقية سيدي يوسف · 2026Ain Zana · 2026Buqus · 2021

Burnt area
142ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
22 Aug 2020 – 23 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
2
delegations
Started on
22 Aug
2020
Heat detections
21
in a single hotspot: 42 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
87MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Aug23 Aug
23 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

22 Aug 2020 · 144 MW · 13 23 Aug 2020 · 31 MW · 8
22 Aug 23 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
44km/h · peak gust
35%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 2 Sept.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. غار الدماء where it started
    118 ha reached on 22 Aug
    0.2 %
  2. ساقية سيدي يوسف
    25 ha reached on 22 Aug
    0.0 %

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 forest76 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland14 %
  • Agricultural areas8.6 %
  • Other land cover1.4 %
  • Other natural land0.7 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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)
22 Aug 35.7 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Aug 31.2 °C 45 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
24 Aug after 30.6 °C 37 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
25 Aug after 31.4 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
26 Aug after 32.9 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Aug after 34.5 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 Aug after 37.3 °C 20 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm High 38
29 Aug after 39.1 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 48
30 Aug after 31.2 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
31 Aug after 24.7 °C 59 % 55 km/h 0.9 mm High 21
1 Sept after 28.4 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Sept after 26.5 °C 51 % 36 km/h 1.8 mm Moderate 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Aug 2020
After · 30 Aug 2020

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 · 21Every 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 Tunisia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the غار الدماء fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 22 August 2020 and 23 August 2020: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 142 hectares (1.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: غار الدماء (118 ha, 0.2 %); ساقية سيدي يوسف (25 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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.

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 198.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 21 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.

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.