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سجنان fire, October 2026 سجنان

Out · last detection 5 Oct 2026, 13:27 UTC

The fire started on 2 October 2026 in سجنان, Tunisia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 161 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 26th largest in Bizerte since 2016 (of 39 with a page). Number 26 in Tunisia in 2026, of 36.

The power measured by the satellite is low (29.6 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
161ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
≈ 4days
2 Oct 2026 – 5 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit
1
delegations
Started on
2 Oct
2026
Heat detections
14
in a single hotspot: 30 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
36MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Oct5 Oct
5 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

2 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 3 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 4 Oct 2026 · 7 MW · 8 5 Oct 2026 · 65 MW · 6
2 Oct 3 Oct 4 Oct 5 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
45km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 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
    161 ha reached on 2 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

  • Coniferous forest84 %
  • Broadleaved forest11 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland3.1 %
  • Agricultural areas1.9 %

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 area0.23 ha
Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.23 hectares of built-up land and about 20 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)
2 Oct 30.0 °C 35 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
3 Oct 30.2 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
4 Oct 31.6 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
5 Oct 32.2 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
6 Oct after 31.6 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Sept 2026
After · 12 Oct 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 2 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 9 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak9 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1014 µg/m³
Optical depth0.18
3012345
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 · 14Every 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 (2 October 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 5 October 2026 (4 days from 2 October 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 161 hectares (1.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered سجنان (161 ha, 0.3 %).
Is the سجنان fire still active?
No fire detections since 5 Oct 2026, 13:27 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.2 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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 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. 14 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.