Rabee'a fire, 17 July 2023 Rabee'a, Kansaba, Badama
The fire started on 17 July 2023 in Rabee'a, Syria, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 4,838 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 4th largest in Lattakia since 2016 (of 38 with a page). The largest in Syria in 2023, of 7.
- Burnt area
- 4,838ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 6days
- 17 Jul 2023 – 22 Jul 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- subdistricts
- Started on
- 17 Jul
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 217
- in a single hotspot: 371 MW
- Danger at start
- 32
- High · FWI index
- Energy released
- 462MW
- 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 one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 5 Aug.
This area had burned before
32% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 10 ha in 2016, 93 ha in 2017, 59 ha in 2018, 170 ha in 2019, 1,281 ha in 2020, 163 ha in 2021, 48 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,569 ha that had burned before.
- 1,281 ha Rabee'a fire, October 2020 4,042 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 85 ha Rabee'a fire, September 2017 105 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 29 ha Rabee'a fire, October 2021 443 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 23 ha Rabee'a fire, July 2021 166 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8 ha Rabee'a fire, September 2017 117 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3 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 started4,122 ha reached on 12 Jul19 %
-
717 ha reached on 28 Jul4.2 %
-
11 ha reached on 17 Jul0.1 %
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
- Coniferous forest36 %
- Mixed forest33 %
- Other natural land23 %
- Agricultural areas7.5 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Jul | 32.6 °C | 21 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 12 Jul | 34.8 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 13 Jul | 34.5 °C | 31 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 14 Jul | 33.2 °C | 40 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 15 Jul | 33.6 °C | 45 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 16 Jul | 34.5 °C | 31 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 17 Jul | 34.5 °C | 26 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 18 Jul | 34.0 °C | 34 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 19 Jul | 33.0 °C | 42 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 20 Jul | 32.0 °C | 50 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 21 Jul | 31.9 °C | 51 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 22 Jul | 31.8 °C | 54 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 23 Jul after | 32.8 °C | 51 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 24 Jul after | 33.5 °C | 50 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 25 Jul after | 33.7 °C | 35 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 26 Jul after | 34.0 °C | 39 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 27 Jul after | 33.5 °C | 39 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 28 Jul after | 32.1 °C | 50 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 29 Jul after | 31.6 °C | 53 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 30 Jul after | 30.4 °C | 59 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 31 Jul after | 31.6 °C | 57 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 1 Aug after | 32.1 °C | 51 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 2 Aug after | 31.9 °C | 44 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 3 Aug after | 30.6 °C | 58 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 4 Aug after | 31.3 °C | 59 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 5 Aug after | 30.2 °C | 69 % | 56 km/h | 2.0 mm | Low 11 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 15 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 38 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 217Every 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 · 2 km away
- 13,507 haQastal MaafJuly 2025 · 11 days · 8 km away
- 4,774 haEin El-BaydaJuly 2023 · 6 days · 11 km away
- 3,803 haRabee'aSeptember 2025 · 4 days · 13 km away
- 4,824 haQastal Maaf9 October 2020 · 2 days · 17 km away
- 2,603 haKansabaOctober 2020 · 3 days · 17 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Rabee'a fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 17 July 2023 and 22 July 2023: 6 days between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 4,838 hectares (48.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Rabee'a (4,122 ha, 19 %); Kansaba (717 ha, 4.2 %); Badama (11 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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.