سبيطلة fire, August 2019 سبيطلة
The fire started on 20 August 2019 in سبيطلة, Tunisia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 111 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 29th largest in Kasserine since 2016 (of 32 with a page). Number 9 in Tunisia in 2019, of 10.
The power measured by the satellite is low (16.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
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- Burnt area
- 111ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 5days
- 20 Aug 2019 – 24 Aug 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- delegations
- Started on
- 20 Aug
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 9
- in a single hotspot: 16 MW
- Danger at start
- 38
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 32MW
- 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 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.8 mm on 23 Aug.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
What happened to each town
-
سبيطلة where it started111 ha reached on 21 Aug0.1 %
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 forest77 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland13 %
- Sclerophyllous scrub10 %
Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Aug | 29.7 °C | 32 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 21 Aug | 30.6 °C | 28 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 22 Aug | 30.4 °C | 35 % | 33 km/h | 5.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 23 Aug | 26.7 °C | 45 % | 24 km/h | 3.8 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 · 9Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,730 haالقصرين الجنوبيةJune 2020 · 9 days · 5 km away
- 1,310 haالقصرين الجنوبيةJuly 2021 · 8 days · 10 km away
- 1,196 haسبيطلةJuly 2020 · 8 days · 19 km away
- 1,783 haالقصرين الجنوبيةJuly 2020 · 5 days · 25 km away
- 1,124 haسبالة أوالد عسكرAugust 2021 · 6 days · 26 km away
- 2,255 haالقصرين الجنوبية26 June 2021 · 16 days · 27 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the سبيطلة fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 August 2019 to 24 August 2019 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 August 2019 to 22 August 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 111 hectares (1.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered سبيطلة (111 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 30.6 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very high.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Tunisia (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: 198 · 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: 22 August 2019 → 24 August 2019.
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 20 August 2019 to 22 August 2019. 9 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.