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DZ · Algeria · –

Aïn El Assel fire, August 2026 عين العسل · Aïn El Assel

Out · last detection 31 Aug 2026, 13:21 UTC

The fire started on 29 August 2026 in Aïn El Assel, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,134 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 17th largest in El Tarf since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 55 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.

Compare with…

Suggestions: نفزة · 2022Bekkouche Lakhdar · 2019Aïn El Assel · 2017Bouteldja · 2022

Burnt area
1,134ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
≈ 3days
29 Aug 2026 – 31 Aug 2026
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
29 Aug
2026
Heat detections
30
in a single hotspot: 353 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
825MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Aug31 Aug
31 Aug 2026

How it evolved, day by day

29 Aug 2026 · 1,647 MW · 29 31 Aug 2026 · 4 MW · 1
29 Aug 31 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

39°high
34km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 10 Sept.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 676 ha in 2017, 40 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (11 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

  1. Aïn El Assel عين العسل 16,285 inhabitants · 4.1 km from the centre where it started
    1,128 ha reached on 29 Aug
    12 %

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 forest80 %
  • Other natural land20 %

Protected area affected (EFFIS layer): 100 %

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)

Started with 60 days without rain: 16 % of the area in Algeria

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
29 Aug 39.3 °C 31 % 34 km/h 1.0 mm Very high 45
30 Aug 32.1 °C 66 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
31 Aug 32.6 °C 61 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
1 Sept after 33.5 °C 48 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Sept after 33.9 °C 47 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
3 Sept after 32.1 °C 47 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Sept after 30.1 °C 56 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Sept after 30.8 °C 56 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
6 Sept after 31.8 °C 42 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Sept after 32.1 °C 55 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Sept after 31.5 °C 62 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Sept after 35.1 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Sept after 31.9 °C 52 % 30 km/h 2.1 mm Very high 38

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 44.6, a minimum humidity of 31% and more than two months without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 26.

FWI at the start 44.6
Minimum humidity 31 %
Days without rain 60+
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

نفزة fire, July 2022
107 ha 1 day FWI 42.1 Min. humidity 31 % 62 km away, in 2022

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

2 days
median duration
222 ha
median area
4 %
went past 1,000 ha
2.6 mm
rain at the end (median; 9 of 26 had it)

It was 5.1 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 3 days, against 2 days.

Only 1 of its 26 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 17 of 26, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.6 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

2.1 mmfirst rain
10 Sept10 days after it ended
34km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 31 Aug, and on 10 Sept 2.1 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 9 of 26, with a median of 2.6 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Aug 2026
After · 7 Sept 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 29 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 210 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 66: 4.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak210 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM10294 µg/m³
Optical depth2.53
27 Aug29 Aug31 Aug
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 · 30Every 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 Aïn El Assel fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (29 August 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 31 August 2026 (3 days from 29 August 2026), the last day with detections before more than 10 days in a row without any, so it is approximate.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,134 hectares (11.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Aïn El Assel (1,128 ha, 12 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Aïn El Assel and came within 4.1 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 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 26. Their median duration was 2 days and their median area 222 ha; 4 % went past 1,000 ha. Only 1 of its 26 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. In 17 of 26, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 2.6 mm.

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.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • The official perimeter has no end date: the end is the last day with VIIRS detections inside the perimeter before a gap of more than 10 days (150 days at most), so it is approximate. 30 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.

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.