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DZ · Algeria · –

Aïn El Hadjar fire, July 2026 عين الحجر · Aïn El Hadjar, Moulay Larbi

Out · last detection 15 Jul 2026, 01:59 UTC

The fire started on 12 July 2026 in Aïn El Hadjar, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,730 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 20 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Oued Sebaa · 2016Doui Thabet · 2026Doui Thabet · 2020Youb · 2017

Burnt area
3,730ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
≈ 4days
12 Jul 2026 – 15 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
12 Jul
2026
Heat detections
209
in a single hotspot: 123 MW
Danger at start
112
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.8GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jul15 Jul
15 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

13 Jul 2026 · 4,118 MW · 154 14 Jul 2026 · 1,219 MW · 54 15 Jul 2026 · 1 MW · 1
13 Jul 14 Jul 15 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

41°high
71km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.4 mm on 24 Jul.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (37 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 Hadjar عين الحجر 29,022 inhabitants · 12.5 km from the centre where it started
    3,608 ha reached on 13 Jul
    8.7 %
  2. Moulay Larbi
    131 ha
    0.3 %

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 forest72 %
  • Other natural land20 %
  • Agricultural areas8.2 %

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 Extreme FWI: 48 % of the area in Algeria Strong wind: 18 % of the area in Algeria Very dry air: 26 % of the area in Algeria

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
12 Jul 39.7 °C 9 % 71 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 112
13 Jul 40.3 °C 14 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 104
14 Jul 41.1 °C 10 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 91
15 Jul 40.5 °C 11 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
16 Jul after 40.6 °C 7 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 94
17 Jul after 40.2 °C 4 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
18 Jul after 39.9 °C 5 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 83
19 Jul after 40.3 °C 6 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 88
20 Jul after 41.1 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 87
21 Jul after 41.0 °C 9 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 82
22 Jul after 41.4 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
23 Jul after 41.1 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.6 mm Extreme 67
24 Jul after 41.0 °C 16 % 36 km/h 2.4 mm Very high 47

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 112.2, a minimum humidity of 9% and 11 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 1.

FWI at the start 112.2
Minimum humidity 9 %
Days without rain 11
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Oued Sebaa fire, July 2016
136 ha 2 days FWI 95.9 Min. humidity 12 % 72 km away, in 2016

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 1.2 mm on 10 Jul.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 1. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

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

2.4 mmfirst rain
24 Jul9 days after it ended
71km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 15 Jul, and on 24 Jul 2.4 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

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 · 5 Jul 2026
After · 22 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 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 15: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak24 µg/m³
Days over the guideline1 day
PM1077 µg/m³
Optical depth0.59
10 Jul12 Jul14 Jul
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 · 209Every 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 Hadjar fire last?
The official perimeter only gives the start date (12 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 15 July 2026 (4 days from 12 July 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 3,730 hectares (37.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Aïn El Hadjar (3,608 ha, 8.7 %); Moulay Larbi (131 ha, 0.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Aïn El Hadjar and came within 12.5 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 41.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 71 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 112, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 12 July 2026 → 15 July 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. 209 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.