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Güçlükonak fire, 12 July 2016 Güçlükonak, Şırnak merkez

Out · last detection 15 Jul 2016, 10:43 UTC

The fire started on 12 July 2016 in Güçlükonak, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,105 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 12th largest in Şırnak since 2016 (of 192 with a page). Number 24 in Türkiye in 2016, of 223.

The power measured by the satellite is low (13.2 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 · 2020Şırnak merkez · 2018Güçlükonak · 2020Güçlükonak · 2020

Burnt area
1,105ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
7days
12 Jul 2016 – 18 Jul 2016
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
12 Jul
2016
Heat detections
22
in a single hotspot: 13 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
26MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jul18 Jul
15 Jul 2016

How it evolved, day by day

12 Jul 2016 · 2 MW · 2 13 Jul 2016 · 22 MW · 9 14 Jul 2016 · 57 MW · 9 15 Jul 2016 · 24 MW · 2
12 Jul 13 Jul 14 Jul 15 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

37°high
32km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 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 0.7% of the area of London (11 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 · 9.6 km from the centre where it started
    978 ha reached on 12 Jul
    2.0 %
  2. Şırnak merkez Şırnak 467,810 inhabitants · 40.4 km from the centre
    129 ha reached on 14 Jul
    0.1 %

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

  • Scrub and transitional woodland56 %
  • Other natural land25 %
  • Mixed forest19 %

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)
12 Jul 34.0 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Jul 35.5 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Jul 35.6 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Jul 36.6 °C 10 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Jul 37.7 °C 9 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
17 Jul 38.5 °C 11 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Jul 38.6 °C 12 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
19 Jul after 36.4 °C 13 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
20 Jul after 38.4 °C 11 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
21 Jul after 36.9 °C 9 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
22 Jul after 35.3 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
23 Jul after 36.1 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
24 Jul after 37.2 °C 11 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
25 Jul after 36.1 °C 12 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Jul 2016
After · 25 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 18 July 2016 the air beside the fire reached 26 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak26 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1034 µg/m³
101112131415161718
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 · 22Every 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 12 July 2016 to 18 July 2016 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 July 2016 to 14 July 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,105 hectares (11.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Güçlükonak (978 ha, 2.0 %); Şırnak merkez (129 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Güçlükonak and came within 9.6 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 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very high.
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
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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 13 July 2016 to 14 July 2016. 22 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.