Martigues fire, August 2020 Martigues, Sausset-les-Pins
The fire started on 4 August 2020 in Martigues, France, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 955 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 3th largest in Bouches-du-Rhône since 2016 (of 18 with a page). Number 2 in France in 2020, of 18.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 955ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 4 Aug 2020 – 5 Aug 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 4 Aug
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 22
- in a single hotspot: 34 MW
- Danger at start
- 76
- Very extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 126MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
5 Aug 2020 · 126 MW · 22
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 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.3 mm on 13 Aug.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
933 ha reached on 5 Aug13 %
-
Sausset-les-Pins 7,574 inhabitants · 1.7 km from the centre22 ha reached on 5 Aug1.8 %
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
- Sclerophyllous scrub54 %
- Coniferous forest33 %
- Agricultural areas11 %
- Artificial surfaces1.7 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
Official record
According to BDIFF, a fire of 960 ha was recorded in Martigues on 4 August 2020 (the satellite measured 955 ha). The record has no coordinates, so it was matched by municipality and date.
- Martigues 4 August 2020 · 17:14 960 ha
BDIFF (Base de Données sur les Incendies de Forêts en France). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Aug | 26.6 °C | 27 % | 85 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 76 |
| 5 Aug | 29.5 °C | 22 % | 60 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 6 Aug after | 29.0 °C | 26 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 7 Aug after | 29.2 °C | 27 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 8 Aug after | 28.4 °C | 48 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 9 Aug after | 28.9 °C | 42 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 10 Aug after | 26.3 °C | 61 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 11 Aug after | 27.8 °C | 49 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 12 Aug after | 28.1 °C | 42 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 13 Aug after | 27.5 °C | 52 % | 56 km/h | 4.3 mm | Moderate 12 |
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 7 August 2020 the air beside the fire reached 20 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 · 22Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 233 haMartiguesJuly 2025 · 2 days · 2 km away
- 318 haEnsuès-la-RedonneJuly 2016 · 1 day · 9 km away
- 319 haSaint-Mitre-les-RempartsAugust 2020 · 2 days · 12 km away
- 445 haFos-sur-Mer10 August 2016 · 2 days · 17 km away
- 3,015 haLes Pennes-MirabeauAugust 2016 · 2 days · 19 km away
- 696 haLes Pennes-MirabeauJuly 2025 · 2 days · 20 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Martigues fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 4 August 2020 and 5 August 2020: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 955 hectares (9.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Martigues (933 ha, 13 %); Sausset-les-Pins (22 ha, 1.8 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Martigues and came within 0.9 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 29.5 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 85 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 76, class Very extreme.
- 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 · 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. 22 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with BDIFF: 960 official ha against 955 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
- 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 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.