Moux fire, July 2021 Moux, Fabrezan, Fontcouverte
The fire started on 24 July 2021 in Moux, France, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 809 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.
It is the 5th largest in Aude since 2016 (of 15 with a page). Number 2 in France in 2021, of 10.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 809ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 24 Jul 2021 – 25 Jul 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 4
- communes
- Started on
- 24 Jul
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 19
- in a single hotspot: 71 MW
- Danger at start
- 26
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 238MW
- detected power per day, on average
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 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.8 mm on 28 Jul.
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
-
316 ha reached on 24 Jul20 %
-
Fabrezan 1,306 inhabitants · 1.3 km from the centre243 ha reached on 25 Jul8.4 %
-
Fontcouverte 575 inhabitants · fire reached the centre232 ha reached on 25 Jul23 %
-
Camplong-d'Aude 389 inhabitants · 2.1 km from the centre19 ha1.5 %
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 %
- Agricultural areas25 %
- Coniferous forest21 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 74 %
- ZEPA Corbières occidentales FR9112027
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.55 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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
Official record
According to BDIFF, a fire of 767 ha was recorded in Moux on 24 July 2021 (the satellite measured 809 ha). The record has no coordinates, so it was matched by municipality and date.
- Moux 24 July 2021 · 12:11 767 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Jul | 28.9 °C | 42 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 25 Jul | 28.6 °C | 40 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 26 Jul after | 27.6 °C | 41 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 27 Jul after | 31.7 °C | 33 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 28 Jul after | 28.6 °C | 48 % | 38 km/h | 2.8 mm | Low 8 |
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.
Detections table · 19Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Moux fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 24 July 2021 and 25 July 2021: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 809 hectares (8.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 4 municipalities: Moux (316 ha, 20 %); Fabrezan (243 ha, 8.4 %); Fontcouverte (232 ha, 23 %); Camplong-d'Aude (19 ha, 1.5 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire reached the centre of Fontcouverte: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 28.9 °C, humidity dropped to 40 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.
- 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. 19 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with BDIFF: 767 official ha against 809 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
- 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.
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.