Samandağ fire, September 2020 Antakya, Samandağ
The fire started on 5 September 2020 in Samandağ, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,613 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the largest fire in Hatay since 2016 (of 18 with a page). Number 3 in Türkiye in 2020, of 212.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,613ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 5days
- 5 Sept 2020 – 9 Sept 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 5 Sept
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 261
- in a single hotspot: 434 MW
- Danger at start
- 32
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.1GW
- detected power per day, on average
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 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Antakya 377,793 inhabitants · 10.3 km from the centre2,169 ha reached on 5 Sept2.9 %
-
1,452 ha reached on 5 Sept4.0 %
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 forest46 %
- Mixed forest41 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland10 %
- Agricultural areas2.5 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.21 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Sept | 33.0 °C | 36 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 6 Sept | 29.9 °C | 44 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 7 Sept | 31.1 °C | 42 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 8 Sept | 32.4 °C | 44 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 9 Sept | 33.1 °C | 26 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 10 Sept after | 35.6 °C | 23 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 11 Sept after | 32.8 °C | 25 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 12 Sept after | 29.1 °C | 61 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 13 Sept after | 28.1 °C | 54 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 14 Sept after | 28.4 °C | 61 % | 32 km/h | 0.5 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 15 Sept after | 29.7 °C | 57 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 16 Sept after | 29.2 °C | 63 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 17 Sept after | 28.6 °C | 60 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 18 Sept after | 29.1 °C | 58 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 19 Sept after | 28.3 °C | 60 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
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 · 261Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Samandağ fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 September 2020 to 9 September 2020 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 September 2020 to 8 September 2020.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 3,613 hectares (36.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Antakya (2,169 ha, 2.9 %); Samandağ (1,452 ha, 4.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 10.3 km of the centre of Antakya, the closest of the areas it touched. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 8 September 2020 → 9 September 2020.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 September 2020 to 8 September 2020. 261 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.
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.