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TN · Tunisia · –

قرمبالية fire, August 2021 قرمبالية

Out · last detection 7 Aug 2021, 12:55 UTC

The fire started on 4 August 2021 in قرمبالية, Tunisia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 453 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

Number 15 in Tunisia in 2021, of 37.

The power measured by the satellite is low (15.3 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: مرناق · 2022زغوان · 2022مرناق · 2022تاكلسة · 2017

Burnt area
453ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
4 Aug 2021 – 7 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
1
delegations
Started on
4 Aug
2021
Heat detections
12
in a single hotspot: 15 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
56MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Aug7 Aug
7 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

6 Aug 2021 · 106 MW · 10 7 Aug 2021 · 6 MW · 2
6 Aug 7 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

35°high
53km/h · peak gust
34%lowest humidity

It had gone 54 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8 ha in 2020.

What happened to each town

  1. قرمبالية where it started
    454 ha reached on 6 Aug
    1.5 %

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

  • Coniferous forest55 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub25 %
  • Agricultural areas11 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland8.4 %
  • Other natural land0.7 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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

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 34.6 °C 34 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
5 Aug 29.2 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Aug 30.4 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Aug 29.6 °C 47 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
8 Aug after 29.1 °C 65 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
9 Aug after 33.6 °C 43 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
10 Aug after 37.8 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Aug after 38.8 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Aug after 34.6 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
13 Aug after 30.8 °C 47 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Aug after 30.9 °C 48 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
15 Aug after 30.8 °C 47 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
16 Aug after 32.4 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Aug after 30.9 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 38.2, a minimum humidity of 34% and 54 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 26.

FWI at the start 38.2
Minimum humidity 34 %
Days without rain 54
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

مرناق fire, July 2022
746 ha 4 days FWI 38.0 Min. humidity 33 % 16 km away, in 2022

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

2 days
median duration
226 ha
median area
4 %
went past 1,000 ha
1.2 mm
rain at the end (median; 11 of 26 had it)

It was 2.0 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 4 days, against 2 days.

Only 5 of its 26 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 15 of 26, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.2 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

—first rain
—no rain in ten days
53km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 7 Aug, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. Twins with rain when they ended: 11 of 26, with a median of 1.2 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Jul 2021
After · 14 Aug 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 · 12Every 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 Tunisia

Frequently asked questions

How long did the قرمبالية fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 4 August 2021 and 7 August 2021: 4 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 453 hectares (4.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered قرمبالية (454 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Tunisia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 26. Their median duration was 2 days and their median area 226 ha; 4 % went past 1,000 ha. Only 5 of its 26 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 15 of 26, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 1.2 mm.

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: 198 · 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.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 198.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 12 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 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.