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Savur fire, October 2024 Savur

Out · last detection 20 Oct 2024, 10:35 UTC

The fire started on 20 October 2024 in Savur, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 298 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 76th largest in Mardin since 2016 (of 131 with a page). Number 87 in Türkiye in 2024, of 271.

The power measured by the satellite is low (9.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…
Burnt area
298ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
20 Oct 2024 – 23 Oct 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
20 Oct
2024
Heat detections
1
in a single hotspot: 10 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
10MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Oct23 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

20 Oct 2024 · 10 MW · 1

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

18°high
45km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.0 mm on 2 Nov.

This area had burned before

73% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 101 ha in 2016, 180 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 218 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Savur 27,304 inhabitants · 15.7 km from the centre where it started
    298 ha reached on 20 Oct
    0.3 %

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

  • Scrub and transitional woodland61 %
  • Agricultural areas39 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
23 Oct 17.7 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
24 Oct after 18.5 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Oct after 20.0 °C 15 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Oct after 19.1 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Oct after 19.6 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Oct after 18.8 °C 15 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Oct after 20.4 °C 16 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
30 Oct after 20.4 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
31 Oct after 19.9 °C 15 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Nov after 20.5 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
2 Nov after 18.4 °C 36 % 27 km/h 9.0 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 13 Oct 2024
After · 30 Oct 2024

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 · Copernicus

On 25 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 8 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak8 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1010 µg/m³
Optical depth0.28
181920212223242526
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 1Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Türkiye ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Savur fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 October 2024 to 23 October 2024 (4 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 October 2024 to 23 October 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 298 hectares (3.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Savur (298 ha, 0.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Savur and came within 15.7 km of its centre. 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 17.7 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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
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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 23 October 2024 to 23 October 2024. One Suomi-NPP VIIRS detection 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.