Sarrance fire, March 2025 Sarrance
The fire started on 10 March 2025 in Sarrance, France, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 125 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
This record is most likely a pastoral burn (écobuage) in the Pyrenees, not a forest fire. In winter, grassland and scrub are burnt to renew the pasture, and this fire does not appear in France's official forest fire database (BDIFF). That is why it is left out of the fire rankings.
We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but not yet its hotspots: NASA publishes the yearly hotspot archive only once the year closes. The page picks it up automatically when it is available.
- Burnt area
- 125ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 10 Mar 2025 – 10 Mar 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 10 Mar
- 2025
- Danger at start
- 0
- Very low · FWI index
- Natura 2000
- 100%
- of the perimeter is protected land
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.6 mm on 11 Mar.
This area had burned before
95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 90 ha in 2019, 104 ha in 2022, 101 ha in 2023, 68 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 119 ha that had burned before.
- 104 ha Sarrance fire, March 2022 133 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 101 ha Sarrance fire, March 2023 110 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 90 ha Sarrance fire, February 2019 373 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
125 ha2.7 %
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
- Other natural land94 %
- Agricultural areas4.1 %
- Broadleaved forest1.6 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %
- LIC Massif du Montagnon FR7200745
Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Mar | 11.1 °C | 56 % | 35 km/h | 1.9 mm | Very low 0 |
| 11 Mar after | 10.7 °C | 73 % | 36 km/h | 10.6 mm | Very low 0 |
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 12 March 2025 the air beside the fire reached 6 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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)
Other fires nearby
- 701 haEscotFebruary 2026 · 1 day · 6 km away
- 690 haArette16 February 2019 · 4 days · 14 km away
- 860 haSainte-Engrâce14 February 2019 · 3 days · 23 km away
- 1,172 haLarrau24 February 2026 · 1 day · 31 km away
- 1,316 haAussurucqFebruary 2026 · 1 day · 36 km away
- 867 haMendive19 February 2025 · 7 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sarrance fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 10 March 2025 and 10 March 2025: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 125 hectares (1.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Sarrance (125 ha, 2.7 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The closest fire to a town centre came within 1.0 km of Sarrance. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 11.1 °C, humidity dropped to 56 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 0, class Very low.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of France (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 · 18
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 ADM5 (Open Data Commons Attribution 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.