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Ain Charchar fire, 12 July 2026 عين شرشار · Ain Charchar, Bekkouche Lakhdar

Out · last measured on 12 Jul 2026

The fire started on 12 July 2026 in Ain Charchar, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,739 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 10th largest in Skikda since 2016 (of 102 with a page). Number 41 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.

Burnt area
1,739ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
12 Jul 2026 – 12 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
12 Jul
2026
Heat detections
102
in a single hotspot: 173 MW
Danger at start
82
Very extreme · FWI index

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jul12 Jul

The weather it burned in

45°high
37km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

20% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 125 ha in 2020, 132 ha in 2021, 95 ha in 2022.

What happened to each town

  1. Ain Charchar عين شرشار 15,725 inhabitants · 2.6 km from the town where it started
    1,107 ha reached on 17 Jul
    9.7 %
  2. Bekkouche Lakhdar بكوش لخضر 15,176 inhabitants · 2.1 km from the town
    636 ha reached on 18 Jul
    4.2 %

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

  • Mixed forest66 %
  • Other natural land24 %
  • Agricultural areas9.6 %

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)
12 Jul 44.7 °C 8 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
13 Jul after 41.1 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
14 Jul after 42.7 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
15 Jul after 44.3 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
16 Jul after 46.9 °C 8 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
17 Jul after 47.0 °C 6 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 85
18 Jul after 45.6 °C 10 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 65
19 Jul after 46.8 °C 7 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 90
20 Jul after 47.5 °C 7 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
21 Jul after 47.9 °C 7 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 93
22 Jul after 44.5 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Jul 2026
After · 19 Jul 2026

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 15 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak16 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1043 µg/m³
Optical depth0.40
101112131415
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 · 102Every 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 Ain Charchar fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 12 July 2026 and 12 July 2026: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,739 hectares (17.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ain Charchar (1,107 ha, 9.7 %); Bekkouche Lakhdar (636 ha, 4.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 2.1 km of Bekkouche Lakhdar. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 44.7 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 82, class Very extreme.
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.