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Madiq Castle fire, 8 June 2021 Madiq Castle, Shat-ha

Out · last detection 19 Jun 2021, 11:32 UTC

The fire started on 8 June 2021 in Madiq Castle, Syria, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,194 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 5th largest in Hama since 2016 (of 37 with a page). Number 2 in Syria in 2021, of 23.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Beit Yashout · 2025Fakhura · 2020Rabee'a · 2025

Burnt area
2,194ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
14days
8 Jun 2021 – 21 Jun 2021
Municipalities hit
2
subdistricts
Started on
8 Jun
2021
Heat detections
45
in a single hotspot: 110 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
114MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jun21 Jun
19 Jun 2021

How it evolved, day by day

12 Jun 2021 · 20 MW · 8 13 Jun 2021 · 67 MW · 12 14 Jun 2021 · 401 MW · 15 15 Jun 2021 · 35 MW · 4 19 Jun 2021 · 50 MW · 6
12 Jun 13 Jun 14 Jun 15 Jun 19 Jun

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
64km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone 56 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.4% of the area of London (22 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. Madiq Castle where it started
    2,167 ha reached on 12 Jun
    7.6 %
  2. Shat-ha
    32 ha reached on 13 Jun
    0.2 %

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

  • Agricultural areas93 %
  • Other natural land4.0 %
  • Artificial surfaces3.5 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area10 ha
Residents≈ 1,800

Inside the perimeter there were about 10 hectares of built-up land and about 1,800 residents (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
8 Jun 31.0 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Jun 29.9 °C 47 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Jun 29.7 °C 37 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Jun 27.3 °C 57 % 49 km/h 1.8 mm Moderate 11
12 Jun 29.0 °C 40 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
13 Jun 31.7 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
14 Jun 30.5 °C 38 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Jun 28.9 °C 44 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Jun 27.5 °C 47 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 Jun 28.3 °C 45 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Jun 29.7 °C 45 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
19 Jun 29.8 °C 47 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
20 Jun 30.2 °C 47 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Jun 29.9 °C 44 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
22 Jun after 30.3 °C 46 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
23 Jun after 30.7 °C 46 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
24 Jun after 31.9 °C 45 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
25 Jun after 34.0 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
26 Jun after 34.1 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
27 Jun after 35.2 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
28 Jun after 35.7 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Jun after 35.8 °C 36 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
30 Jun after 36.3 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
1 Jul after 35.7 °C 37 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Jun 2021
After · 28 Jun 2021

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 45Every 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 Syria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Madiq Castle fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 June 2021 to 21 June 2021 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 June 2021 to 14 June 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,194 hectares (21.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Madiq Castle (2,167 ha, 7.6 %); Shat-ha (32 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.7 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 14 June 2021 → 21 June 2021.
  2. Start date: 11 June 2021 → 8 June 2021.

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.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 June 2021 to 14 June 2021. 45 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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 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.