Gigean fire, August 2024 Frontignan, Gigean, Balaruc-le-Vieux
The fire started on 18 August 2024 in Gigean, France, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 303 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 4th largest in Hérault since 2016 (of 14 with a page). The largest in France in 2024, of 7.
The power measured by the satellite is low (18.8 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
- 303ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 18 Aug 2024 – 18 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- communes
- Started on
- 18 Aug
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 3
- in a single hotspot: 19 MW
- Danger at start
- 24
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 41MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
18 Aug 2024 · 41 MW · 3
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 one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 24 Aug.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
What happened to each town
-
Frontignan 24,136 inhabitants · 1.0 km from the centre203 ha5.1 %
-
87 ha reached on 18 Aug5.3 %
-
Balaruc-le-Vieux 2,737 inhabitants · 2.9 km from the centre13 ha1.8 %
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
- Sclerophyllous scrub80 %
- Agricultural areas16 %
- Mixed forest4.0 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 2.1 hectares of built-up land and about 80 residents (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
Official record
According to BDIFF, a fire of 310 ha was recorded in Gigean on 18 August 2024 (the satellite measured 303 ha). The record has no coordinates, so it was matched by municipality and date.
- Gigean 18 August 2024 · 15:11 310 ha · cause: arson
BDIFF (Base de Données sur les Incendies de Forêts en France). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Aug | 26.7 °C | 42 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 19 Aug after | 27.2 °C | 47 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 20 Aug after | 27.7 °C | 45 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 21 Aug after | 27.6 °C | 41 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 22 Aug after | 25.3 °C | 54 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 23 Aug after | 26.3 °C | 54 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 24 Aug after | 24.5 °C | 76 % | 40 km/h | 1.4 mm | Low 9 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 21 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 3Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Gigean fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 18 August 2024 and 18 August 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 303 hectares (3.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Frontignan (203 ha, 5.1 %); Gigean (87 ha, 5.3 %); Balaruc-le-Vieux (13 ha, 1.8 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 1.0 km of the centre of Frontignan, 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 26.7 °C, humidity dropped to 42 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class High.
- 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. 3 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with BDIFF: 310 official ha against 303 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
- 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.
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.