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Ain Kechra fire, July 2017 Ain Kechra, Oum Toub

Out · last measured on 17 Jul 2017

The fire started on 12 July 2017 in Ain Kechra, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,366 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 12th largest in Skikda since 2016 (of 102 with a page). Number 13 in Algeria in 2017, of 173.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ain Kechra · 2026Oum Toub · 2026Kerkera · 2023Grarem Gouga · 2026

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
1,366ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
6days
12 Jul 2017 – 17 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
12 Jul
2017
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

38°high
38km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 0.9% of the area of London (14 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. Ain Kechra where it started
    710 ha
    5.0 %
  2. Oum Toub أم الطوب 34,458 inhabitants · 8.0 km from the centre
    658 ha
    3.7 %

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 land53 %
  • Mixed forest47 %

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 area2.4 ha
Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.4 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (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)
12 Jul 37.9 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
13 Jul 35.5 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Jul 33.2 °C 40 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Jul 31.8 °C 40 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Jul 30.2 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Jul 30.7 °C 44 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Jul after 33.4 °C 40 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
19 Jul after 35.8 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Jul after 34.2 °C 39 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Jul after 32.4 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Jul after 34.1 °C 51 % 48 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
23 Jul after 36.3 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
24 Jul after 31.3 °C 41 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Jul after 30.0 °C 52 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
26 Jul after 30.0 °C 44 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
27 Jul after 31.3 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Jul 2017
After · 24 Jul 2017

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in Algeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ain Kechra fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 12 July 2017 and 17 July 2017: 6 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,366 hectares (13.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ain Kechra (710 ha, 5.0 %); Oum Toub (658 ha, 3.7 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 8.0 km of the centre of Oum Toub, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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.

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.

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.
  • 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.
  • 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.