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Güçlükonak fire, September 2020 Güçlükonak, Eruh

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2020, 23:09 UTC

The fire started on 15 September 2020 in Güçlükonak, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,328 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 9th largest in Şırnak since 2016 (of 192 with a page). Number 13 in Türkiye in 2020, of 212.

The power measured by the satellite is low (18.3 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 · 2018Güçlükonak · 2016Güçlükonak · 2020Güçlükonak · 2020

Burnt area
1,328ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
15 Sept 2020 – 17 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
15 Sept
2020
Heat detections
27
in a single hotspot: 18 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
44MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Sept17 Sept
17 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

15 Sept 2020 · 32 MW · 9 16 Sept 2020 · 73 MW · 11 17 Sept 2020 · 26 MW · 7
15 Sept 16 Sept 17 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
34km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

19% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 246 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.8% of the area of London (13 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 · 14.6 km from the centre where it started
    1,042 ha reached on 15 Sept
    2.1 %
  2. Eruh 20,513 inhabitants · 23.2 km from the centre
    289 ha
    0.3 %

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 woodland69 %
  • Mixed forest22 %
  • Other natural land9.6 %

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)
15 Sept 33.9 °C 13 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Sept 33.9 °C 11 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Sept 34.2 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Sept after 32.8 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Sept after 32.1 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Sept after 32.1 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Sept after 31.6 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Sept after 32.3 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Sept after 30.6 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Sept after 30.8 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Sept after 29.8 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Sept after 28.0 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Sept after 28.7 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Sept 2020
After · 24 Sept 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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 14 September 2020 the air beside the fire reached 31 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak31 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM1049 µg/m³
1314151617181920
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 · 27Every 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?
Copernicus dates it between 15 September 2020 and 17 September 2020: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,328 hectares (13.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Güçlükonak (1,042 ha, 2.1 %); Eruh (289 ha, 0.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Güçlükonak and came within 14.6 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 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 34 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 27 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.