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Yunusemre fire, July 2021 Yunus Emre · Yunusemre, Şehzadeler

Out · last measured on 18 Jul 2021

The fire started on 18 July 2021 in Yunusemre, Türkiye, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 165 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 20th largest in Manisa since 2016 (of 23 with a page). Number 106 in Türkiye in 2021, of 138.

Compare with…

We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
165ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
18 Jul 2021 – 18 Jul 2021
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
18 Jul
2021
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

37°high
45km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone 28 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. Yunusemre Yunus Emre 239,324 inhabitants · 19.7 km from the centre where it started
    98 ha
    0.1 %
  2. Şehzadeler 171,116 inhabitants · 19.1 km from the centre
    67 ha
    0.1 %

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

  • Other natural land65 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland35 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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)
18 Jul 37.3 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Jul after 34.4 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Jul after 33.4 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Jul after 34.0 °C 35 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Jul after 31.4 °C 33 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Jul after 31.5 °C 28 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Jul after 31.3 °C 35 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Jul after 31.4 °C 38 % 52 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
26 Jul after 33.3 °C 31 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
27 Jul after 35.0 °C 27 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Jul after 36.4 °C 23 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Jul 2021
After · 25 Jul 2021

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in Türkiye ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Yunusemre fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 18 July 2021 and 18 July 2021: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 165 hectares (1.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Yunusemre (98 ha, 0.1 %); Şehzadeler (67 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 19.1 km of the centre of Şehzadeler, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very 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.

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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.

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.