Laruns fire, March 2023 Laruns
The fire started on 16 March 2023 in Laruns, France, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 132 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
This record is most likely a pastoral burn (écobuage) in the Pyrenees, not a forest fire. In winter, grassland and scrub are burnt to renew the pasture, and this fire does not appear in France's official forest fire database (BDIFF). That is why it is left out of the fire rankings.
The power measured by the satellite is low (0.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
- Burnt area
- 132ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 16 Mar 2023 – 17 Mar 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 16 Mar
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 1
- in a single hotspot: 1 MW
- Danger at start
- 0
- Very low · FWI index
- Energy released
- 1MW
- sum of detected power
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 one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.2 mm on 18 Mar.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 82 ha in 2019, 124 ha in 2021, 30 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 128 ha that had burned before.
- 124 ha Laruns fire, February 2021 350 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 82 ha Laruns fire, January 2019 237 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 10 ha Laruns fire, January 2022 100 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
132 ha reached on 17 Mar0.5 %
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
- Other natural land64 %
- Broadleaved forest36 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 99 %
- ZEPA Hautes vallées d'Aspe et d'Ossau FR7210087
- LIC Massif du Montagnon FR7200745
Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Mar | 19.4 °C | 33 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 17 Mar | 13.4 °C | 43 % | 60 km/h | 3.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 18 Mar after | 10.9 °C | 59 % | 36 km/h | 6.2 mm | Very low 0 |
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 17 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 8 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 1Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 701 haEscotFebruary 2026 · 1 day · 14 km away
- 629 haEscotFebruary 2025 · 3 days · 14 km away
- 566 haEscotFebruary 2021 · 3 days · 15 km away
- 690 haArette16 February 2019 · 4 days · 26 km away
- 544 haSainte-EngrâceFebruary 2023 · 4 days · 34 km away
- 860 haSainte-Engrâce14 February 2019 · 3 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Laruns fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 16 March 2023 and 17 March 2023: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 132 hectares (1.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Laruns (132 ha, 0.5 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The closest fire to a town centre came within 0.5 km of Laruns. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 19.4 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 0, class Very low.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of France (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 · 18
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 ADM5 (Open Data Commons Attribution 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.