How long did the Al Qala fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 18 August 2022 and 20 August 2022: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,795 hectares (18.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Al Qala (1,799 ha, 6.3 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The closest fire to a town centre came within 1.5 km of Al Qala. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.6 °C, humidity dropped to 46 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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.

DZ · Algeria · 2022-08-18 → 2022-08-20

Al Qala fire, August 2022 القالة · Al Qala

Out · last detection 20 Aug 2022, 11:28 UTC

The fire started on 18 August 2022 in Al Qala, Algeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,795 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 12th largest in El Tarf since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 10 in Algeria in 2022, of 58.

Burnt area: 1,795ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 3days; 18 Aug 2022 – 20 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; communes
Started on: 18 Aug; 2022
Heat detections: 42; in a single hotspot: 73 MW
Danger at start: 40; Very high · FWI index
Energy released: 411MW; sum of detected power

Play back 20 Aug 2022

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Aug20 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

181920

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

The weather it burned in

31°high

49km/h · peak gust

46%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 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.

What happened to each town

Al Qala القالة 28,411 inhabitants · 1.5 km from the town where it started

1,799 ha reached on 18 Aug

6.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

Mixed forest90 %
Other natural land6.2 %
Agricultural areas3.0 %
Artificial surfaces1.1 %

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)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
18 Aug	30.6 °C	57 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
19 Aug	29.4 °C	46 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
20 Aug	29.5 °C	48 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
21 Aug after	29.4 °C	55 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Aug after	29.7 °C	56 %	45 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 40
23 Aug after	30.1 °C	47 %	48 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 41
24 Aug after	29.3 °C	54 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
25 Aug after	28.7 °C	61 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
26 Aug after	31.3 °C	40 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
27 Aug after	29.3 °C	57 %	42 km/h	0.7 mm	High 27
28 Aug after	29.8 °C	60 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
29 Aug after	31.0 °C	44 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
30 Aug after	34.4 °C	35 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Aug 2022

After · 27 Aug 2022

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 18 August 2022 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1061 µg/m³

Optical depth1.14

WHO 15

16171819202122232425

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 · 42Every 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 Al Qala fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 18 August 2022 and 20 August 2022: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,795 hectares (18.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Al Qala (1,799 ha, 6.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The closest fire to a town centre came within 1.5 km of Al Qala. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.6 °C, humidity dropped to 46 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

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.

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