How long did the Aïn El Assel fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 July 2017 to 5 August 2017 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 July 2017 to 4 August 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,498 hectares (15.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Aïn El Assel (1,455 ha, 15 %); Buqus (4 ha, 0.0 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire started in Aïn El Assel and came within 1.6 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 43.2 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, class 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.

DZ · Algeria · 2017-07-30 → 2017-08-05

Aïn El Assel fire, 30 July 2017 عين العسل · Aïn El Assel, Buqus

Out · last detection 5 Aug 2017, 13:27 UTC

The fire started on 30 July 2017 in Aïn El Assel, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,498 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 14th largest in El Tarf since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 11 in Algeria in 2017, of 173.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bouteldja · 2022 Buqus · 2017 Souarekh · 2017 El Tarf · 2026

Burnt area: 1,498ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 7days; 30 Jul 2017 – 5 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; communes
Started on: 30 Jul; 2017
Heat detections: 129; in a single hotspot: 254 MW
Danger at start: 48; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 676MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jul5 Aug

Play back 5 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

31 Jul 1 Aug 2 Aug 3 Aug 4 Aug 5 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

43°high

52km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

It had gone 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 12 Aug.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.9% of the area of London (15 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Aïn El Assel عين العسل 16,285 inhabitants · 1.6 km from the centre where it started

1,455 ha reached on 31 Jul

15 %
Buqus بوقوس 11,234 inhabitants · 10.4 km from the centre

4 ha

0.0 %

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

Mixed forest58 %
Other natural land42 %

Protected area affected (EFFIS layer): 99 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
30 Jul	40.6 °C	20 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
31 Jul	43.2 °C	13 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
1 Aug	42.8 °C	13 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
2 Aug	40.0 °C	12 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
3 Aug	41.6 °C	11 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
4 Aug	41.7 °C	11 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
5 Aug	36.4 °C	36 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
6 Aug after	34.9 °C	33 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
7 Aug after	33.8 °C	43 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
8 Aug after	39.3 °C	27 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
9 Aug after	37.7 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
10 Aug after	34.3 °C	22 %	43 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 48
11 Aug after	28.5 °C	45 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
12 Aug after	25.7 °C	47 %	37 km/h	1.3 mm	Moderate 15

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Jul 2017

After · 12 Aug 2017

Before After

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 4 August 2017 the air beside the fire reached 145 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 83: 5.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak145 µg/m³

Days over the guideline8 days

PM10154 µg/m³

WHO 15

2829303112345678

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 · 129Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Aïn El Assel fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 July 2017 to 5 August 2017 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 July 2017 to 4 August 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,498 hectares (15.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Aïn El Assel (1,455 ha, 15 %); Buqus (4 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire started in Aïn El Assel and came within 1.6 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 43.2 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 66, class 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

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Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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.

How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 30 July 2017 to 4 August 2017. 129 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.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.

Where it burned