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Kansaba fire, August 2022 Kansaba, Shat-ha, Salanfa

Out · last measured on 24 Aug 2022

The fire started on 24 August 2022 in Kansaba, Syria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 173 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 25th largest in Lattakia since 2016 (of 38 with a page). The only fire in Syria with a page in 2022.

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
173ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
24 Aug 2022 – 24 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit
3
subdistricts
Started on
24 Aug
2022
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

27°high
42km/h · peak gust
51%lowest humidity

It had gone 59 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.

What happened to each town

  1. Kansaba where it started
    172 ha
    1.0 %
  2. Shat-ha
    1 ha
    0.0 %
  3. Salanfa
    1 ha
    0.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Coniferous forest52 %
  • Mixed forest22 %
  • Agricultural areas15 %
  • Other natural land11 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

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)
24 Aug 27.4 °C 51 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
25 Aug after 26.8 °C 48 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
26 Aug after 28.5 °C 39 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
27 Aug after 30.0 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
28 Aug after 33.0 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Aug after 32.6 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Aug after 32.9 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
31 Aug after 32.7 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Sept after 31.3 °C 39 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
2 Sept after 31.6 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Sept after 30.0 °C 43 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Aug 2022
After · 31 Aug 2022

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 24 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 11 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak11 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1023 µg/m³
Optical depth0.37
222324252627
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Syria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kansaba fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 24 August 2022 and 24 August 2022: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 173 hectares (1.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Kansaba (172 ha, 1.0 %); Shat-ha (1 ha, 0.0 %); Salanfa (1 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 27.4 °C, humidity dropped to 51 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 23, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Syria (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.

Satellite cross-check

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.

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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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.