Rabee'a fire, October 2020 Rabee'a
The fire started on 8 October 2020 in Rabee'a, Syria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 4,042 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
We are reviewing this page: some of its data look inconsistent (the place, the dates or the area), so treat them with caution.
- Burnt area
- 4,042ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 8 Oct 2020 – 9 Oct 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- subdistricts
- Started on
- 8 Oct
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 15
- in a single hotspot: 56 MW
- Danger at start
- 34
- High · FWI index
- Energy released
- 173MW
- sum of detected power
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 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 72 ha in 2016, 206 ha in 2017, 55 ha in 2018, 156 ha in 2019.
- 110 ha Rabee'a fire, September 2017 117 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 95 ha Rabee'a fire, September 2017 105 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 50 ha Rabee'a fire, July 2019 295 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Rabee'a where it started4,053 ha reached on 8 Oct19 %
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
- Mixed forest39 %
- Coniferous forest38 %
- Other natural land17 %
- Agricultural areas6.1 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 Oct | 34.3 °C | 18 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 9 Oct | 34.5 °C | 11 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 10 Oct after | 32.7 °C | 17 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 11 Oct after | 28.3 °C | 54 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 12 Oct after | 28.9 °C | 53 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 13 Oct after | 27.4 °C | 59 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 14 Oct after | 27.6 °C | 50 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 15 Oct after | 27.2 °C | 56 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 16 Oct after | 27.3 °C | 55 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 17 Oct after | 27.3 °C | 51 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 18 Oct after | 28.8 °C | 29 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 19 Oct after | 28.9 °C | 46 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
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 · 15Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,838 haRabee'a17 July 2023 · 6 days · 2 km away
- 13,507 haQastal MaafJuly 2025 · 11 days · 10 km away
- 4,774 haEin El-BaydaJuly 2023 · 6 days · 12 km away
- 3,803 haRabee'aSeptember 2025 · 4 days · 13 km away
- 2,603 haKansabaOctober 2020 · 3 days · 15 km away
- 4,824 haQastal Maaf9 October 2020 · 2 days · 19 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Rabee'a fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 8 October 2020 and 9 October 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 4,042 hectares (40.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Rabee'a (4,053 ha, 19 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Syria (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.
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
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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.