Ain Charchar fire, September 2021 عين شرشار · Ain Charchar
The fire started on 24 September 2021 in Ain Charchar, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 112 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 93th largest in Skikda since 2016 (of 102 with a page). Number 87 in Algeria in 2021, of 92.
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
- 112ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 24 Sept 2021 – 24 Sept 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- communes
- Started on
- 24 Sept
- 2021
- Danger at start
- 46
- Very high · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 13 ha in 2017.
What happened to each town
-
112 ha1.0 %
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 land50 %
- Mixed forest49 %
- Agricultural areas1.8 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Sept | 39.4 °C | 17 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 25 Sept after | 34.8 °C | 31 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 26 Sept after | 32.2 °C | 44 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 27 Sept after | 27.8 °C | 59 % | 36 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 24 |
| 28 Sept after | 28.4 °C | 45 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 29 Sept after | 27.1 °C | 49 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 30 Sept after | 26.0 °C | 51 % | 30 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 24 |
| 1 Oct after | 27.3 °C | 44 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 2 Oct after | 26.7 °C | 44 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 3 Oct after | 32.8 °C | 29 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 4 Oct after | 27.0 °C | 50 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 24 September 2021 the air beside the fire reached 42 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 36: 2.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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)
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ain Charchar fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 24 September 2021 and 24 September 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 112 hectares (1.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Ain Charchar (112 ha, 1.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Ain Charchar and came within 6.8 km of its centre. 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 39.4 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very 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 · 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.
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
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.
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.