Şemdinli fire, May 2021 Şemdinli
The fire started on 29 May 2021 in Şemdinli, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,649 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the largest fire in Hakkâri since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 14 in Türkiye in 2021, of 138.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,649ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 8days
- 29 May 2021 – 5 Jun 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 29 May
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 74
- in a single hotspot: 92 MW
- Danger at start
- 48
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 101MW
- 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 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 406 ha in 2016, 466 ha in 2017, 357 ha in 2018, 668 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,609 ha that had burned before.
- 668 ha Şemdinli fire, October 2019 798 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 406 ha Şemdinli fire, July 2016 407 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 361 ha Şemdinli fire, August 2017 378 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 357 ha Şemdinli fire, July 2018 517 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 104 ha Şemdinli fire, October 2017 106 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
1,650 ha reached on 30 May1.4 %
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 woodland76 %
- Other natural land17 %
- Broadleaved forest7.1 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 May | 27.7 °C | 15 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 30 May | 26.2 °C | 17 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 31 May | 27.2 °C | 21 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 1 Jun | 29.3 °C | 16 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 2 Jun | 28.3 °C | 17 % | 60 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 3 Jun | 25.6 °C | 16 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 4 Jun | 26.6 °C | 15 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 5 Jun | 27.5 °C | 19 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 6 Jun after | 26.0 °C | 16 % | 54 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 7 Jun after | 25.7 °C | 18 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 8 Jun after | 27.1 °C | 14 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 9 Jun after | 27.6 °C | 16 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 10 Jun after | 26.2 °C | 21 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 11 Jun after | 27.0 °C | 18 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 12 Jun after | 27.5 °C | 17 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 13 Jun after | 26.4 °C | 19 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
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 28 May 2021 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 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 · 74Every 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 Şemdinli fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 May 2021 to 5 June 2021 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 May 2021 to 3 June 2021.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,649 hectares (16.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Şemdinli (1,650 ha, 1.4 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Şemdinli and came within 17.2 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 29.3 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, class Extreme.
- 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.
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 29 May 2021 to 3 June 2021. 74 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.
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.