Fire near Orlu

What the satellites measured

No satellite measured this fire: it is known from the press or from the emergency services, not from a thermal detection. There is therefore no power curve and no pass to detail; the timeline above tells what was announced.

“Detected extent” is not “burned area”: it is the union of the ground footprints of the satellite pixels, and a 375 m pixel counts in full even when only a forest edge is burning. Compared with press figures it is in practice one and a half to three times the area reported. Detections taken at the edge of the scan swath, too coarse to measure anything at all, are excluded. These figures come from thermal detection and are not an official assessment: only the emergency services and the competent authorities are authoritative.

Timeline

Activestarted on 26 September at 20:22

1. First report26 September at 20:22

   "Ces incendies s’inscrivent dans une durée inédite pour notre territoire" : l'Ariège touchée par une inquiétante reprise de flammes, les… · La Dépêche

A "contained" fire is no longer spreading but is not out: crews remain on site and it can flare up again. Statuses and areas come from press reports and official sources, matched automatically; they are not an official record : only the prefecture and the fire service are authoritative. An entry with no news for ten days is closed automatically, and each entry's history keeps track of who announced what, and when.

The location

No satellite detected this fire: it is known only through press and official sources. There is therefore nothing to replay : the map shows the place, and the timeline above tells what was announced. This is the most common case in France: a fire of a few hectares brought under control in the afternoon slips between two overpasses without leaving a single hot pixel.

How the radiative power evolved

One point per satellite pass: the sum of the fire radiative power measured over the fire. This is the curve that says whether the fire eased off or picked up again, which no cumulative figure shows. The window covers 30 days; beyond that, clustering would merge two successive fires in the same place.

One other fire near Orlu

Separate fires, apart in time or in space, not pieces of this one. A single municipality can have several over one summer, and a forest massif often covers more than a hundred square kilometres.

• 14 to 16 September389 ha

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