How long did the Ain Kechra fire last?

The official perimeter only gives the start date (16 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 23 July 2026 (8 days from 16 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 3,545 hectares (35.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 4 municipalities: Ain Kechra (2,332 ha, 16 %); Bin El Ouiden (1,187 ha, 11 %); Ouldja Boulballout (29 ha, 0.4 %); Oum Toub (3 ha, 0.0 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire came within 2.1 km of the centre of Bin El Ouiden, 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 44.8 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 47 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.

DZ · Algeria · 2026-07-16 → 2026-07-23

Ain Kechra fire, July 2026 Ain Kechra, Bin El Ouiden, Ouldja Boulballout

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2026, 13:53 UTC

The fire started on 16 July 2026 in Ain Kechra, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 3,545 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 6th largest in Skikda since 2016 (of 102 with a page). Number 21 in Algeria in 2026, of 197.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 3,545ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: ≈ 8days; 16 Jul 2026 – 23 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit: 4; communes
Started on: 16 Jul; 2026
Heat detections: 159; in a single hotspot: 216 MW
Danger at start: 62; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 890MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jul23 Jul

Play back 23 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jul 19 Jul 20 Jul 21 Jul 22 Jul 23 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

45°high

47km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone 30 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 27 Jul.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 75 ha in 2020, 1 ha in 2023, 1 ha in 2025.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (35 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

Ain Kechra where it started

2,332 ha reached on 18 Jul

16 %
Bin El Ouiden بين الويدان 21,629 inhabitants · 2.1 km from the centre

1,187 ha reached on 21 Jul

11 %
Ouldja Boulballout الولجة بوالبلوط 4,488 inhabitants · 5.8 km from the centre

29 ha reached on 18 Jul

0.4 %
Oum Toub أم الطوب 34,458 inhabitants · 8.5 km from the centre

3 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 forest72 %
Other natural land24 %
Broadleaved forest2.0 %
Agricultural areas1.6 %

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)
16 Jul	44.8 °C	9 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
17 Jul	43.5 °C	12 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 82
18 Jul	44.1 °C	9 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 69
19 Jul	44.8 °C	8 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 75
20 Jul	44.7 °C	9 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 73
21 Jul	44.2 °C	9 %	30 km/h	0.1 mm	Very extreme 76
22 Jul	43.2 °C	15 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
23 Jul	41.6 °C	17 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 71
24 Jul after	40.5 °C	19 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
25 Jul after	38.2 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
26 Jul after	34.8 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
27 Jul after	30.2 °C	49 %	37 km/h	2.0 mm	Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 9 Jul 2026

After · 30 Jul 2026

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 22 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 69 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 48: 3.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak69 µg/m³

Days over the guideline5 days

PM10102 µg/m³

Optical depth0.89

WHO 15

141516171819202122

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 · 159Every 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 Ain Kechra fire last?: The official perimeter only gives the start date (16 July 2026). The end comes from the heat detections inside the perimeter: it burned until 23 July 2026 (8 days from 16 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 3,545 hectares (35.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 4 municipalities: Ain Kechra (2,332 ha, 16 %); Bin El Ouiden (1,187 ha, 11 %); Ouldja Boulballout (29 ha, 0.4 %); Oum Toub (3 ha, 0.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire came within 2.1 km of the centre of Bin El Ouiden, 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 44.8 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 47 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 · 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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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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
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. 159 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.

Where it burned