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سجنان fire, 27 August 2026 سجنان

Out · last detection 28 Aug 2026, 01:15 UTC

The fire started on 27 August 2026 in سجنان, Tunisia, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 370 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 8th largest in Bizerte since 2016 (of 39 with a page). Number 12 in Tunisia in 2026, of 36.

Compare with…
Burnt area
370ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
≈ 2days
27 Aug 2026 – 28 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
1
delegations
Started on
27 Aug
2026
Heat detections
17
in a single hotspot: 178 MW
Danger at start
52
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
654MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Aug28 Aug
28 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

27 Aug 2026 · 1,166 MW · 9 28 Aug 2026 · 143 MW · 8
27 Aug 28 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

44°high
29km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 54 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.

What happened to each town

  1. سجنان where it started
    371 ha reached on 27 Aug
    0.6 %

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 forest54 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub21 %
  • Agricultural areas19 %
  • Broadleaved forest3.2 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland2.7 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area0.28 ha
Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.28 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (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)
27 Aug 44.5 °C 14 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
28 Aug 35.0 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Aug after 39.9 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.9 mm Very high 48
30 Aug after 33.2 °C 51 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
31 Aug after 34.2 °C 45 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Sept after 35.2 °C 34 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Sept after 36.1 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Sept after 31.9 °C 49 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Sept after 30.8 °C 52 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
5 Sept after 31.9 °C 47 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
6 Sept after 32.4 °C 42 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Aug 2026
After · 4 Sept 2026

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 29 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 53 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 37: 2.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak53 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1086 µg/m³
Optical depth1.09
25262728293031
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 · 17Every 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 Tunisia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the سجنان fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (27 August 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 28 August 2026 (2 days from 27 August 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 370 hectares (3.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered سجنان (371 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 44.5 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 29 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
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 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
What do you think is wrong?

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 198.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 17 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 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.