Güçlükonak fire, 18 July 2020 Güçlükonak, Şırnak merkez
The fire started on 18 July 2020 in Güçlükonak, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,466 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 3th largest in Şırnak since 2016 (of 192 with a page). Number 5 in Türkiye in 2020, of 212.
The power measured by the satellite is low (15.5 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…
- Burnt area
- 2,466ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 4days
- 18 Jul 2020 – 21 Jul 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 18 Jul
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 61
- in a single hotspot: 16 MW
- Danger at start
- 75
- Very extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 88MW
- 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 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
55% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 202 ha in 2016, 1,361 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,361 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
2,117 ha reached on 18 Jul4.3 %
-
350 ha reached on 19 Jul0.2 %
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 woodland36 %
- Mixed forest34 %
- Other natural land26 %
- Broadleaved forest4.0 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Jul | 35.8 °C | 15 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 75 |
| 19 Jul | 36.1 °C | 8 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 70 |
| 20 Jul | 37.6 °C | 10 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 21 Jul | 37.8 °C | 9 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 22 Jul after | 36.8 °C | 9 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 23 Jul after | 36.0 °C | 14 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 87 |
| 24 Jul after | 36.0 °C | 14 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 75 |
| 25 Jul after | 36.2 °C | 14 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 75 |
| 26 Jul after | 36.6 °C | 11 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 27 Jul after | 36.8 °C | 13 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 28 Jul after | 38.4 °C | 13 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 29 Jul after | 38.1 °C | 13 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 30 Jul after | 36.4 °C | 10 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 76 |
| 31 Jul after | 35.2 °C | 13 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 74 |
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 23 July 2020 the air beside the fire reached 33 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 times the WHO daily 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 · 61Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,661 haŞırnak merkez Şırnak10 July 2018 · 9 days · 3 km away
- 5,712 haGüçlükonak2 August 2020 · 7 days · 8 km away
- 1,596 haGüçlükonak18 August 2020 · 6 days · 15 km away
- 1,368 haŞırnak merkez Şırnak14 September 2020 · 7 days · 15 km away
- 1,414 haGüçlükonak2 July 2016 · 7 days · 16 km away
- 1,682 haEruhAugust 2017 · 4 days · 25 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Güçlükonak fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 18 July 2020 and 21 July 2020: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,466 hectares (24.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Güçlükonak (2,117 ha, 4.3 %); Şırnak merkez (350 ha, 0.2 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Güçlükonak and came within 10.2 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 8 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 75, class Very 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.
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. 61 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.