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Adekar fire, October 2023 Adekar

Out · last detection 14 Oct 2023, 02:13 UTC

The fire started on 13 October 2023 in Adekar, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 177 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 75th largest in Bejaia since 2016 (of 101 with a page). Number 55 in Algeria in 2023, of 86.

The power measured by the satellite is low (10.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
177ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
13 Oct 2023 – 14 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
13 Oct
2023
Heat detections
10
in a single hotspot: 11 MW
Danger at start
23
High · FWI index
Energy released
49MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

14 Oct 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Oct14 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

1314

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

The weather it burned in

26°high
31km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.7 mm on 24 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

What happened to each town

  1. Adekar where it started
    177 ha reached on 13 Oct
    1.6 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Other natural land77 %
  • Mixed forest23 %

Land cover inside the perimeter as reported by Copernicus EFFIS (outside the Corine Land Cover area).

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)
13 Oct 25.5 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
14 Oct 25.2 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
15 Oct after 21.8 °C 43 % 31 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 21
16 Oct after 22.8 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
17 Oct after 26.0 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
18 Oct after 26.5 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
19 Oct after 24.5 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
20 Oct after 20.6 °C 23 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Oct after 17.6 °C 39 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Oct after 22.2 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
23 Oct after 24.7 °C 26 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
24 Oct after 17.6 °C 36 % 48 km/h 5.7 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Oct 2023
After · 21 Oct 2023

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 17 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak30 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM10107 µg/m³
Optical depth0.46
11121314151617
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 · 10Every 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 Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Adekar fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 13 October 2023 and 14 October 2023: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 177 hectares (1.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Adekar (177 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 25.5 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Algeria (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: 14 · 1021

Satellite cross-check

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 14 · 1021.

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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0). 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.