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Pülümür fire, September 2018 Pülümür

Out · last detection 26 Sept 2018, 11:27 UTC

The fire started on 26 September 2018 in Pülümür, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 100 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 13th largest in Tunceli since 2016 (of 13 with a page). Number 103 in Türkiye in 2018, of 104.

The power measured by the satellite is low (28.2 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
100ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
26 Sept 2018 – 26 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
26 Sept
2018
Heat detections
4
in a single hotspot: 28 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Energy released
79MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Sept26 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

26

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

The weather it burned in

24°high
31km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 1 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Pülümür 3,760 inhabitants · 4.2 km from the town where it started
    100 ha reached on 26 Sept
    0.1 %

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 land96 %
  • Agricultural areas4.0 %

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)
26 Sept 24.2 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Sept after 24.5 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Sept after 26.1 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Sept after 25.2 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Sept after 24.8 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
1 Oct after 23.0 °C 30 % 63 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Sept 2018
After · 3 Oct 2018

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 · Copernicus

On 25 September 2018 the air beside the fire reached 15 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak15 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1021 µg/m³
242526272829
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 4Every 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 Türkiye ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pülümür fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 26 September 2018 and 26 September 2018: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 100 hectares (1.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pülümür (100 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 4.2 km of Pülümür. 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 24.2 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Türkiye (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

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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 112.

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 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 slightly from each country’s official figure.