Rabee'a fire, 8 October 2021 Rabee'a
The fire started on 8 October 2021 in Rabee'a, Syria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 443 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 16th largest in Lattakia since 2016 (of 38 with a page). Number 9 in Syria in 2021, of 23.
- Burnt area
- 443ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 4days
- 8 Oct 2021 – 11 Oct 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- subdistricts
- Started on
- 8 Oct
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 55
- in a single hotspot: 70 MW
- Danger at start
- 27
- High · FWI index
- Energy released
- 621MW
- 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 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.2 mm on 17 Oct.
This area had burned before
34% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 51 ha in 2018, 19 ha in 2019, 84 ha in 2020.
What happened to each town
-
Rabee'a where it started444 ha reached on 8 Oct2.1 %
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
- Mixed forest49 %
- Other natural land18 %
- Agricultural areas17 %
- Coniferous forest17 %
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 | 31.9 °C | 16 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 9 Oct | 33.0 °C | 17 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 10 Oct | 30.8 °C | 29 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 11 Oct | 30.6 °C | 37 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 12 Oct after | 28.0 °C | 45 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 13 Oct after | 28.6 °C | 42 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 14 Oct after | 29.8 °C | 33 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 15 Oct after | 29.0 °C | 33 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 16 Oct after | 26.3 °C | 49 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 17 Oct after | 24.1 °C | 58 % | 58 km/h | 6.2 mm | Very low 4 |
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 · 55Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,042 haRabee'aOctober 2020 · 2 days · 4 km away
- 4,838 haRabee'a17 July 2023 · 6 days · 6 km away
- 13,507 haQastal MaafJuly 2025 · 11 days · 13 km away
- 3,803 haRabee'aSeptember 2025 · 4 days · 13 km away
- 4,774 haEin El-BaydaJuly 2023 · 6 days · 14 km away
- 4,824 haQastal Maaf9 October 2020 · 2 days · 22 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Rabee'a fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 8 October 2021 and 11 October 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 443 hectares (4.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Rabee'a (444 ha, 2.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class High.
- 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.