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Güçlükonak fire, 2 July 2016 Güçlükonak

Out · last detection 8 Jul 2016, 23:34 UTC

The fire started on 2 July 2016 in Güçlükonak, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,414 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 6th largest in Şırnak since 2016 (of 192 with a page). Number 11 in Türkiye in 2016, of 223.

The power measured by the satellite is low (13.5 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…

Suggestions: Güçlükonak · 2020Güçlükonak · 2020Şırnak merkez · 2018Güçlükonak · 2020

Burnt area
1,414ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
7days
2 Jul 2016 – 8 Jul 2016
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
2 Jul
2016
Heat detections
35
in a single hotspot: 13 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
28MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jul8 Jul
8 Jul 2016

How it evolved, day by day

2 Jul 2016 · 12 MW · 7 3 Jul 2016 · 28 MW · 4 4 Jul 2016 · 62 MW · 16 5 Jul 2016 · 37 MW · 6 8 Jul 2016 · 3 MW · 2
2 Jul 3 Jul 4 Jul 5 Jul 8 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

38°high
48km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.9% of the area of London (14 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Güçlükonak 13,091 inhabitants · 8.2 km from the centre where it started
    1,417 ha reached on 2 Jul
    2.8 %

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

  • Other natural land62 %
  • Mixed forest22 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland16 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

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)
2 Jul 36.3 °C 16 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Jul 37.1 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Jul 37.8 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
5 Jul 36.7 °C 15 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
6 Jul 35.3 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
7 Jul 35.7 °C 19 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Jul 36.1 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Jul after 36.4 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Jul after 36.6 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Jul after 34.9 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
12 Jul after 35.2 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Jul after 37.0 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Jul after 37.2 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Jul after 38.4 °C 11 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
16 Jul after 39.1 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
17 Jul after 40.3 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 Jul after 40.7 °C 13 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Jun 2016
After · 15 Jul 2016

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 6 July 2016 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1040 µg/m³
301234567891011
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 · 35Every 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 Türkiye ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Güçlükonak fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 July 2016 to 8 July 2016 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 July 2016 to 5 July 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,414 hectares (14.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Güçlükonak (1,417 ha, 2.8 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Güçlükonak and came within 8.2 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 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Türkiye (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 · 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 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 July 2016 to 5 July 2016. 35 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.

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.