Fire near Prévenchères

What the satellites measured

This fire was tracked from 19 August at 15:40 to 19 August at 22:06, through 9 satellite detections. The detected extent reaches 685 ha.

Detected extent

685 ha

Cumulative power

1,140 MW

Peak power

560 MW

Detections

9

“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 satellite detection and are not an official assessment: only the local fire and civil protection authorities are authoritative.

Timeline

Contained252 hastarted on 19 August at 16:37 · contained on 20 August at 10:31

1. Reported contained20 August at 10:31

   Incendie en Lozère : le feu fixé après avoir parcouru 250 ha et blessé un pompier — Midi Libre faits-divers

2. Area revised to 252 ha20 August at 09:10

   Lozère : le feu entre Prévenchères et La Bastide-Puylaurent est fixé, 252 hectares parcourus, un pompier blessé — France Bleu

3. Area revised to 250 ha19 August at 22:02

   Prévenchères. 250 hectares parcourus, le feu progresse vers l’Est — lalozerenouvelle

4. Area revised to 180 ha19 August at 21:01

   Incendie : un feu ravage 180 hectares en Lozère, un pompier blessé et un hameau évacué — Sud Ouest faits-divers

5. Area revised to 150 ha19 August at 18:38

   Prévenchères. 150 hectares parcourus, le feu progresse vers l’Est — lalozerenouvelle

6. First report19 August at 16:37

   Un important incendie a déjà parcouru plus de 60 hectares en Lozère, les pompiers luttent sur place — actu.fr Occitanie

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.

Replay how the fire spread

The map is framed on this fire and loads only its detections. The timeline below covers the whole known life of the fire — from the first trace, satellite or report, to the last announcement from emergency services — and the ticks on the bar mark those announcements. Detections often stop before containment: a fire stops radiating once it stops spreading, which is exactly when it is declared contained. “1 h” shows what is burning within an hour of the chosen moment : the map then follows the power curve below and empties when it falls. “12 h” stacks twelve hours , as the home map does, where stacking avoids an empty screen between two satellite passes. Both are true, but they say different things.

The detected extent

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.

Satellite passes in detail

Follow live

The map shows active fires in 3D, with smoke plumes, forecast wind, drop zones and the live position of the Canadair, Dash 8 and Air Tractor aircraft of the French Sécurité civile.