How long did the Pol-e-Dokhtar fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 August 2020 and 24 August 2020: 5 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,652 hectares (16.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Pol-e-Dokhtar (1,655 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, class Extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Iran (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

IR · Iran · 2020-08-20 → 2020-08-24

Pol-e-Dokhtar fire, August 2020 Pol-e-Dokhtar

Out · last detection 24 Aug 2020, 22:19 UTC

The fire started on 20 August 2020 in Pol-e-Dokhtar, Iran, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,652 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 4th largest in Lorestan since 2016 (of 15 with a page). Number 17 in Iran in 2020, of 39.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pol-e-Dokhtar · 2016 Pol-e-Dokhtar · 2016 Pol-e-Dokhtar · 2020 Darreh Shahr County · 2020

Burnt area: 1,652ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 20 Aug 2020 – 24 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 20 Aug; 2020
Heat detections: 59; in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start: 55; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 47MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Aug24 Aug

Play back 24 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

20 Aug 21 Aug 22 Aug 23 Aug 24 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

54km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,416 ha in 2016, 83 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,406 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1% of the area of London (17 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

Pol-e-Dokhtar where it started

1,655 ha

0.4 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS 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.

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)
20 Aug	36.7 °C	8 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
21 Aug	37.2 °C	9 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
22 Aug	36.2 °C	10 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
23 Aug	35.6 °C	13 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 63
24 Aug	33.4 °C	13 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
25 Aug after	35.1 °C	13 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
26 Aug after	35.1 °C	13 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
27 Aug after	35.6 °C	8 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
28 Aug after	35.8 °C	9 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
29 Aug after	37.6 °C	10 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
30 Aug after	39.4 °C	10 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
31 Aug after	36.9 °C	14 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
1 Sept after	36.1 °C	15 %	45 km/h	0.3 mm	Extreme 53
2 Sept after	36.2 °C	15 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
3 Sept after	36.8 °C	11 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Aug 2020

After · 31 Aug 2020

Before After

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 · 0Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Iran ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pol-e-Dokhtar fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 August 2020 and 24 August 2020: 5 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,652 hectares (16.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Pol-e-Dokhtar (1,655 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 63, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Iran (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: 125 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 125.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. 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 ADM2 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.

Where it burned