Chetco Bar Fire

2017194,761 acresOregon

The Chetco Bar Fire burned 194,761 acres, about 304 square miles, across 2 counties. It began on July 12, 2017.

Watch how it happened

Chetco Bar Fire · 2017

How it happened

Watch it burn in the order satellites saw it, coloured by how severely each place burned.

About this replay

Date (UTC)—Historical replay

Burned so far—acres

High severity—of the area so far

Detections10,291satellite fire pixels

Fire milestones

Burn severityHigh, Moderate, Low, Unburned to low, Increased greenness

Burning nowAreas reached in the last half day of satellite passes

Chicago, to scale228 square miles of land, drawn at the fire’s scale

Timing: NASA FIRMS satellite fire detections (7,920 VIIRS and 2,371 MODIS) inside the final perimeter; each place takes the time of its nearest detection, so the order is satellite-observed but interpolated between passes, roughly every 12 hours. Severity: Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (USGS, U.S. Forest Service), mapped from Landsat after the fire.

How severely it burned

Burn severity inside the final perimeter, classified from Landsat images taken before and after the fire.

Map of burn severity across the Chetco Bar Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Highmost vegetation consumed, soils altered	43%	83,409
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	23%	44,350
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	27%	53,103
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	7.0%	13,621
Not mappedcloud, shadow or water in the satellite images	0.1%	267

43% of the area inside the perimeter burned at high severity, about 83,409 acres; 66% burned at moderate or high severity.

Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (U.S. Geological Survey and USDA Forest Service). Classes come from the change in a Landsat burn index (dNBR) between images before and after the fire; acres are each class’s share of the fire’s mapped area.

Where it burned

Acres inside each county, measured from the satellite-mapped perimeter.

Acres burned by county

Curry County	OR	185,756
Josephine County	OR	9,120

Other large fires in Oregon in 2017

Nena Springs Fire70,053 acres
Cinder Butte Fire53,153 acres
Eagle Creek Fire48,787 acres
Happy Dog Fire34,224 acres
Abney Fire33,443 acres
Blanket Creek Fire32,747 acres
Mr Separation Fire25,120 acres

Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (USGS and U.S. Forest Service). Type recorded: Wildfire.